Behind MMMP | Playlist4Parkinsons

Behind Musik, Movement, Mood & Parkinson's

Overview

Our project started with a commitment to including the voices of people with Parkinson’s in our research. This is known as PPI in the UK, which stands for patient and public involvement in research, or participatory medicine in Switzerland. The idea is captured in the phrase ‘nothing about me without me’ and this is a central tenet of how we work.

Thanks to a small network grant from Parkinson’s UK in 2018, we assembled a team of people with Parkinson’s, scientists, and practitioners to develop an agenda for researching how music could help people with Parkinson’s. Here is a link to our paper describing the first workshops we did where everyone was only allowed to introduce themselves via a song: Levelling the Playing Field

What people with Parkinson’s wanted to know was which music should we use, when, and for what purpose, and how?

Although our work is ongoing, we have tried to answer these questions in the steps described below, but we are open to new ideas and new questions so feel free to get in touch!

Process

Step 1. Surveys

We know from music psychology that personal preference is always the best choice for music, so we surveyed people with Parkinson’s in the UK and in Switzerland asking how they used music in their everyday lives. This research was funded by Parkinson Schweiz and by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and conducted with my friends and colleagues Professor Ellen Poliakoff and the University of Manchester and Dr. Michelle Phillips at the Royal Northern College of Music.

The information we discovered is the basis for this website, but also four academic papers. The way people with Parkinson’s listen to music turns out to be very interesting as you can see in the diagrams below. We discovered two main points:

1. People with Parkinson’s listen to music in a similar way to people without Parkinson’s.

This means that the problems with dopamine are not affecting how rewarding listening to and making music can be.

2. People with Parkinson’s use music mostly to motivate themselves to do things, to relax, and as company, but not to help them walking – which is interesting because using musical cueing for walking is what most research investigates.

Paper 1: Music Moves Me in More Ways Than One
Paper 2: Vividness and the Use of Imagery
Paper 3: Use of Music Among Swiss People with Parkinson’s
Paper 4: Qualitative Study of How British People with Parkinson’s Use Music

The following infographic highlights ways in which people with Parkinson’s use music in their everyday lives.

Step 2. Concerts

We know that reading academic articles can be off putting and we wanted to make sure as many people with Parkinson’s as possible could find out how other people with Parkinson’s use music in case it is helpful.

Luckily, we were able to get some extra funding to help us put on two concerts: one in the UK at the Royal Northern College of Music (funded by a SEMPRE Arnold Bentley New Initiatives grant) and the other at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Switzerland (funded by an SNSF Agora grant).

The important thing about these concerts was that the music chosen for the programmes came directly from people with Parkinson’s. For each song, we explained how people with Parkinson’s were using music in ways that helped them, whether it was for doing the chores, exercising, as a personal anthem, reconnecting with their memories or letting their anger out. Below are some pictures showing the concerts, and also the people with Parkinson’s that we interviewed live on stage about why certain songs are special to them.

Step 3. Developing a New Music-and-Movement Course for and with people with Parkinson’s

Thanks for funding from the SNSF, we were able to continue to work directly with people with Parkinson’s, practitioners and scientists in the UK, and in Luzern and Lugano in Switzerland. Through a series of workshops (5 in each place) we explored music through activities, exercises, tasks and talking. After several months, we devised a draft plan and took it back to the people with Parkinson’s and practitioners until we were happy that we had something that would be fun to do as well as being based on good scientific research. The paper describing this process and the course in detail can be found here: The Process of Co-developing Songlines for Parkinson’s

Each week, Songlines has a different music-based theme, including music for marching, music from Africa, Latin America, India, Asia and South Pacific (yes, everyone learns to do a Haka!). We also included music from the 50s all the way through to the 00s, and different styles such as Flamenco and Line Dancing.

Each theme focuses on a different therapeutic approach to helping with symptoms of Parkinson’s, so marching helps people to learn to find the beat and walk in time, whereas the Haka focuses on facial expressions and vocal strength.

The framework described in the Songlines paper was used for each 90-minute session. It included a seated and standing warm up, guided imagery, active rhythmic engagement, song sharing, line dancing, a discussion section about Parkinson’s symptoms, a learning session about the musical theme, and an active session where we try out the dances of the theme, ending with a restore and relax session to help everyone calm down and reflect on what they experienced in the class.

Step 4. Testing Songlines for Parkinson’s

The next step was to try out the new course, and we have now completed three rounds of trial testing with the help of 53 people with Parkinson’s in total (26 in the UK in English and 17 in Switzerland in German). Each person committed to taking part in the 12-week course as well as being tested twice before the course started and once after it finished. That’s 24 weeks in total and we are so grateful for this amazing generosity.

We are also thankful for the brilliant teams who delivered Songlines in the UK and in Switzerland. Without Maria, Andrew, Marietta, Penny, and Lindsay in the UK, and Neda, Martina, and Florian we would simply not have been able to do this research. They all did an amazing job of making sure all the participants were safe, comfortable, listened to and engaged. It was a lot of fun too!

We are currently preparing the results, and it is an exciting time, especially because – throughout the testing – we asked people with Parkinson’s for their feedback so that their voices remained central to the development and application of the course.

Step 5. Clinical Adaptation in Switzerland

The final part of our current research was adapting the Songlines course for clinical use in Switzerland. This meant reducing the time for each session down from 90 to 60 minutes and setting it up so that it was delivered twice per week for 6 weeks instead of once per week for 12 weeks.

For this final step, our project post doc, Dr. Sabrina Köchli was awarded another grant from Parkinson Schweiz, enabling us to include more people in the study. Sabrina has worked incredibly hard across the whole project, conducting nearly 200 movement assessments as well as dealing with all the new technology and managing all the data. What a super star in the making! We are also thankful to Amanda, Alessia and Paolo for facilitating Songlines in Lugano and to Claudia, Barbara, Niklas, Wiebke and Anna for making it happen in Zurich.

For this last study we were lucky to work with neurologists, rehabilitation specialists as well as physical and music therapists at Clinica Hildebrand in Lugano, Kliniken Valens in St. Gallen, and Klinik Lengg in Zurich. It has been an incredible learning journey to understand the different pressures that clinics and clinicians face and we have also adpated how we collect data to accommodate these pressures.

We have just completed these studies and look forward to finding out the results!

MMMP Symposium

On 2nd October 2025, we look forward to sharing all our results in full as many of the people involved in this project gather together in one place for the first time. Including participants, practitioners, medical professionals, and researchers, that’s around 75 people involved in the project from start to finish. And not everyone could come, so we will be recording the whole event, including the final concert and we will link to the hosting site here so you can watch it too.

Meet the Team

Prof. Dr. Dawn Rose

I am a music psychologist working as a Professor at the Lucerne University of Applied Arts and Sciences in Switzerland. My musical background was as a professional drummer and I played and taught until 2018 when I was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Hertfordshire to develop the music and Parkinson’s project. Prior to that, I completed an MSc. (Music, Mind and Brain) and Ph.D. (supervised by Professor Pam Heaton and Dr Alice Jones Bartoli) also at Goldsmiths, University of London. Outside academia, I have written articles for drum magazines such as Rhythm and Drummer and have previously appeared in The Happiness Project, a Wellcome Trust funded project in association with The Roundhouse, London. I appeared on BBC MidWeek and Absolute Radio for this project, and recently again for a BBC documentary on the therapeutic effects of dance with Darcey Bussell. I have also given talks on the use of music to reduce symptoms for people with Parkinson's for Parkinson's UK, the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA), and at The Francis Crick Institute and on the Power of Music panel at the Royal Festival Hall (Meltdown Festival). I also hold black belts in two martial arts; Danzan Ryu Ju Jitzu and WTF Tae Kwon Do.

Prof. Ellen Poliakoff

Ellen is a Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Manchester and co-directs the BEAM lab (Body Eyes And Movement) which researches cognitive, sensory and motor processes in both healthy and clinical or special populations (Parkinson’s, autism). BEAM lab is known for involving people affected by the condition in research, to ensure impactful, relevant and ethical research. Ellen has co-authored 5 journal articles together with people with Parkinson’s. She was a member of Parkinson’s UK’s Involvement Steering Group to inform strategy on promoting involvement in research nationally and internationally (2016-2023) and received a volunteer award for this work (2021). She has also devised and numerous public engagement events including in shopping centres, libraries and art galleries. And until recently was Recorder of the Psychology Section of the British Science Association (2018-2024) responsible for organising Psychology events at the annual British Science Festival. She also enjoys playing and listening to music in her spare time.

Dr. Michelle Phillips

Michelle is a Senior Lecturer in Music Psychology and Head of Enterprise (Academic) at the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester, UK). Her research interests include audience response to live and recorded music, neurological response to music listening, music and time, perception of contemporary music, entrepreneurship, and music and Parkinson’s. Michelle’s research on ‘what makes live music special?’ was recently featured in UK Research and Innovation’s series ‘101 jobs that change the world’. Recent publications include a co-edited volume entitled ‘Music and Time: Psychology, Philosophy, Practice’. Michelle founded the Music, Audiences, Neuroscience, Cognition and Society (MANCS) research centre, which is a collaboration between scholars at the RNCM, University of Salford, University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University, and she is Joint Editor in Chief of the journal Psychology of Music. Michelle has appeared on BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Songs of Praise, ITV News, BBC News online and ITV Granada Reports. She recently worked with the Science and Industry Museum to co-design their ‘Turn It Up: The Power of Music’ exhibition.

Dr. Caroline Whyatt

My background is in the study of how perception and action are linked; how the information we take in through our senses drive movement, and how those movements in turn shape our perception. I have worked in both the UK (Queen’s University Belfast, University of Hertfordshire) and USA (Rutgers, NJ), combining new technologies with traditional clinical tools to better understand this process in people, including Autistic individuals and people with Parkinson’s. This approach not only aims to improve clinical diagnosis and intervention strategies, but also to build a more nuanced and data-driven understanding of people’s experiences, helping us to move beyond broad categories and toward more precise understanding of individual needs.