Commentary on "Why Does Music Therapy Help in Autism?" by N. Khetrapal

Abstract

Khetrapal reviews the literature on music and autism and stresses the need for a greater focus on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying both autism and music perception. I build upon this review and discuss the strong connections between speech prosody and emotion in music. These connections imply that emotion recognition training in one domain can influence emotion recognition in the other. Understanding of emotional speech is frequently impaired in individuals with ASD, so music therapy should be explored further as a possible treatment. IN this issue, Khetrapal reviews recent literature on music perception and autism and provides evidence that the majority of research in music therapy has shown noticeable, beneficial effects for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). She further notes that music therapy as an intervention is in dire need of "true experiments" (more controlled and random assignment research), and that researchers in this field have a unique opportunity to explore a relatively new area – emotion recognition training and treatment of deficits in emotion understanding in ASD with the use of music.