TITLE:
Music Intervention in Cognitive Rehabilitation after Acquired Brain Injury
AUTHORS:
Joshua Lam, Grace Qian
KEYWORDS:
Acquired Brain Injury, Cognitive Rehabilitation, Music Therapy, Personalized Music, Neuroplasticity, Stroke, Traumatic Brain Injury, Sports-Related Concussion, Memory, Executive Function
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Medical Psychology,
Vol.15 No.2,
April
30,
2026
ABSTRACT: Acquired brain injury (ABI), including stroke, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and sports-related concussion (SRC), has become one of the major contributors to disability around the world due to cognitive impairments that lead to deficits in memory, attention, executive functions, and quality of life, affecting a great number of patients. Although the problem of cognitive impairments after ABI is gaining more attention, its rehabilitation is still a challenge because there are no standard protocols for personalized music interventions in ABI treatment. The purpose of this literature review is to investigate the available information on the use of personalized music interventions for cognitive rehabilitation in ABI cases, and to examine the neurobiological mechanisms involved. A narrative literature review from 2000 to 2025 is performed using the PubMed database, Google Scholar search engine, and references from articles. It appears that music stimulates the neural networks responsible for emotions, rewards, memories, and self-references, namely, the hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, dopaminergic pathways, and default mode network. Moreover, personalized music shows gradual improvement in verbal memory, autobiographical memory recall, attention, executive functions, and affective regulation compared to generic music exposure. Although strong evidence exists for the use of personalized music in stroke and traumatic brain injury, there is still much to explore in sport-related concussion populations. However, there is a strong need for standardization of protocols for personalized music therapy and a clear definition of what personalized music entails. The Music-Induced Autobiographical Retrieval Framework (MARF) framework might prove useful in conducting further clinical studies.