This study was conducted with the purpose of determining the effect of therapeutic music activities(playing rhythmic instruments, playing keyboards, and singing with written lyrics) on the degree of unilateral neglect of patients with left hemiplegia, who are not able to recognize the left side due to the disability induced by structural brain lesion. The subjects of this study included 1 male and 1 female inpatients who were diagnosed with a stroke at a hospital for the elderly receiving treatment for severe unilateral neglect due to left hemiplegia. The study was carried out from September 12 to November 8, 2005 for 9 weeks using the multi-treatment design with a total of 30 sessions which included 3 sessions of pre- and post-evaluations, 40 minutes per session. The study was conducted in the order of baseline period and intervention. The baseline was designated as A, rhythmic instrument playing was designated as B, keyboard playing was designated as C, and singing with written lyrics was designated as D, and in order to control the effects of order of the study, subject 1 was conducted in the order of A1-B-A2-C-A3-D and subject 2 was conducted in the order of A1-C-A2-D-A3-B. The MVPT test was used at the first and last sessions of the study in order to measure the level of decrease in unilateral neglect of the study patients. In addition, Albert test and line bisection test were given to the patients at each session in order to assess the level of unilateral neglect. The results of the study are as follows. First, therapeutic music activities showed an effect on decrease in the level of unilateral neglect of the patients. After the intervention, the MVPT raw score of subject 1 increased from 21 points to 29 points, showing an enhancement in his visual perception and he also displayed a 28.57% reduction in unilateral neglect with an increase in the left reaction score from 10 points to 16 points. Subject 2 also displayed improvement in her visual perception following music therapy program with an increase in the MVPT raw score from 20 points to 26 points and a 23.8% reduction in unilateral neglect with an increase in the left reaction score from 9 points to 14 points. Second, each music activity showed an effect on decrease in unilateral neglect compared to the baseline period. In evaluating the average reduction rate of unilateral neglect of the subjects that were found through the line bisection test, intervention B(rhythmic instrument playing) showed a reduction
of 23.03±4.24%, intervention C(keyboard playing) showed a reduction of 35.82±8.88%, and intervention D(singing with written lyrics) showed a reduction of 26.82±4.12%. Therefore, it was revealed that all three of therapeutic music activity interventions had an effect on decrease in unilateral neglect.