New Vanderbilt study: Can drumming lessons support the development of children with Down syndrome

By Jenna Somers

Families interested in enrolling their children in this study should contact the research team at [email protected] or (615) 343-1079.

Down syndrome, the most common chromosomal cause of cognitive disability, affects approximately one in 700 live births. Scientists have known the genetic etiology of Down syndrome for more than 50 years; however, research on how to support excellent quality of life for individuals with Down syndrome remains ongoing.

Children with Down syndrome can have difficulty engaging in behaviors that require controlling their actions, such as resisting the urge to eat an attractive snack or regulating their emotions. Families often struggle to help these children improve these skills, but a team of researchers at Vanderbilt has begun exploring a novel idea: drumming lessons.

The team plans to study whether drumming lessons improve self-control skills, beat-tracking abilities and social behavior in 7-to-12-year-old children with Down syndrome. Amy Needham, professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, leads the study as principal investigator on a two-year, $463,645 grant from the National Institutes of Health. She is collaborating with Caroline Danforth, a third-year Ph.D. student in Needham's Hands-On Play Lab, as well as researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Emory University School of Medicine.

Previous research has explored the effects of drumming on adults with Down syndrome, and a study with adolescents with Autism spectrum disorder demonstrated that drumming enhanced inhibitory control, the brain function that supports self-control skills.

"But this will be the first study to examine the effects of drumming on inhibition in children with Down syndrome," Needham said. "We are eager to find out whether providing children with a fun, accessible activity like drumming lessons could offer empirical support for drumming lessons as part of a collection of therapeutic activities that can be used to increase positive behaviors in children with Down syndrome."

What will study participants do?

Children in the study will be randomly assigned to two different groups. Children in both groups will attend two lab sessions two months apart at the Human Psychophysiology Laboratory for Families at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. During each visit, children will play drums while connected to an EEG device (electroencephalogram) that records their brain activity. The researchers will measure behavioral and brain responses of inhibitory control and drumming and brain measures of beat perception. Parents will complete a survey on their child's social behavior.

In between lab visits, children in one group will receive drumming lessons for two months. The other group will receive their lessons after the second lab visit but continue with their normal daily routines for the two months in between lab sessions.

Predictions and future directions

The research team predicts that the drumming lessons will improve the children's inhibitory control behaviors. The group that takes drumming lessons for two months in between lab sessions should show improved inhibitory control skills, beat perception, and social behavior at the second lab session; the other group's development should also be positively affected, but only once they begin receiving their drumming lessons after the second lab visit.

"If we find evidence for our prediction, then in the future, we could further explore why these improvements occur-what specific brain mechanisms are underlying both inhibitory control abilities and the ability to synchronize one's motor movements with external stimuli as in drumming," Danforth said.

If the study supports their prediction, the researchers plan to examine the effects of learning more complex rhythmic drumming patterns with the same age group. They also plan to study the effects of drumming with 3- to 4-year-old children with Down syndrome, an age at which the brain can more easily absorb new information.

Other members of the research team are Miriam Lense, PhD'14, assistant professor of otolaryngology and director of the Music Cognition Laboratory at VUMC, Angela Maxwell-Horn, assistant professor of pediatrics at VUMC, Alexandra (Sasha) Key, professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine.

Families interested in enrolling their children in the drumming study should contact the research team:

• [email protected]
• (615) 343-1079