Stroke patients recover their memory and ability to concentrate more quickly if they are encouraged to listen to music for a few hours a day.

Their memories and command of language improved more rapidly than those of patients who listened to audio books or were left in silence, a study has found. They were able to focus and sustain attention for longer and they were more cheerful.

Researchers in the psychology department at the University of Helsinki measured patients’ ability one week after their stroke and then began playing them music or speech, or did nothing. They tested them again at three months and six months. Teppo Sarkamo, a PhD student and one of the authors of the study, published in Brain, said: “We found that, three months after the stroke, verbal memory improved . . . by 60 per cent in music listeners, by 18 per cent in book listeners and by 29 per cent in nonlisteners.

“Similarly, focused attention – the ability to control and perform mental operations and resolve conflicts among responses – improved by 17 per cent in music listeners, but no improvement was observed in audio book listeners and nonlisteners. These differences were still essentially the same six months after the stroke.”

He said that most of the music (63 per cent) also contained lyrics, so it must be the music (or the combination of music and voice) that helped.

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