Development And Application Of Music Therapy Aids For Children With Disabilities

By combining electronic technology and music therapy, this paper develops a rehabilitation aids for special children’s receptive music therapy and expand the application research. Because the receptive music therapy is mainly used to improve the sound processing of auditory system and brain state, this paper chooses hyperacusis and inducing brain waves as the object of the rehabilitation aids. In the music therapy for children with hyperacusis, the musical material is processed with real-time filter, which can control the music stimuli frequency better and allows children to receive modest musical stimuli. In the music therapy for children with brain waves disorders, the musical material is processed with binaural beat frequency processing algorithm, which can improve ADHD children’s brain physiological state. In the reducing noise of extended audio material interface, the signal enhance processing is used to enhance the external audio SNR.Based on the desired real-time processing, the main contents of this research include three parts:hardware design, software design and application of music therapy aids.Part One:the hardware design of music therapy aids provides hardware carrier for music therapy programs. Hardware design is composed by core-chip selection, schematic design and PCB design. Considering the processing, portability, energy comsumption, and cost, the research chooses DSP microprocessor TMS320VC5509A as its’ core-chip. The programmable logic device CPLD is added in the hardware schematic design, which integrates the board-level circuit into the chip level circuits. Impedance analysis and timing simulation analysis of the high-frequency signal to critical network are used to improve the stability and reliability of hardware platform in PCB design.Part Two:the software design of music therapy aids is programmed to realize music therapy programs. Software design is composed by software framework and three real-time processing algorithms on DSP. In the digital filtering algorithm, combined with hyperacusis music therapy requirements, FIR and ⅡR is designed and implementationed. In the binaural beat frequency processing algorithms, the amount of computation is reduced by introducing the mean absolute error in SOLA-FS algorithm as criterion. In the audio enhancement processing algorithms, the convergence speed and accuracy of the algorithm is improved by introduced decorrelation vector into tongue-like curve fuction variable step LMS algorithm, wich will provide a better SNR audio signal under the microphone or line input.Part Three:the application research is used to verify the effectiveness of music therapy aids. In the hyperacusis music therapy, music is devided into high-frequency music and low-frequency music. Music therapy program is designed in conjunction with the frequency characteristics of music and digital filtering process. Music therapy program for hypersensitivity to sound will lead to positive impact in autistic children. After the autistic children with hypersensitivity finished their music therapy, the degree of loudness discomfort level will decreased, the evaluation of ATEC and the interview shows, their social, sensory/cognitive/awareness, health/physical/ behavior, and total scores are significantly reduced. In brain waves inducing music therapy, music is chosen based on the ability to induce high frequency brain waves, and music therapy program is designed in conjunction with brain waves music and binaural beat frequency processing. Music therapy program for ADHD EEG abnormal will lead to positive impact in EEG relative energy and behavior. After the ADHD child finished their music therapy, their high frequency β and SMR wave are significantly raised, while low frequency θ wave and θ/β rate lowed, this proves that it improved the problem of low brain arousal. They perform obviously better in the scores of learning, anxiety, Impulsivity/hyperactivity, hyperactivity index.Totally, this research has made the theory and application of music therapy aids enriched.