Music Therapy Improves Emotional Attention Control Abnormalities in Depression Patients: A Pilot Study

Music therapy has been shown to be effective in treating depression, as supported by numerous clinical studies and randomized controlled trials utilizing subjective reports and psychometric scales. However, a more efficient and objective approach is needed to complement these assessments and to investigate the neural effects of music therapy. This study designed a validity assessment framework based on the dot-probe paradigm, which uses participants' attentional biases toward emotional faces as an objective marker of music therapy effectiveness. To validate this framework, we collected 64 -channel electroencephalogram (EEG) signals from patients undergoing music therapy during a dot-probe task, and explored the dynamic cognitive processes in depressed patients before and after treatment using event-related potentials (ERPs). Our results indicate modulated attentional biases toward negative emotional faces in depressed patients following music therapy. Specifically, we observed shorter response times and higher ERP amplitudes for negative faces compared to positive faces before treatment. These abnormalities were ameliorated after treatment and showed significant correlations with pre- and post-treatment scale measurements. These findings lay a foundation for future artificial intelligence-based systems that could automate the assessment of music therapy effectiveness using neurophysiological markers, potentially enabling personalized treatment approaches and real-time therapeutic adjustments.