This semester I had the ability to listen to a Professor from Northwestern University, Dr Krizman's, speech regarding fundamental frequency in concussed athletes. Preceding this presentation I had read one of her previous related papers titled “Auditory biological marker of concussion in children” Kraus et al (2016), which was really fascinating to learn just how much auditory processing is hindered in concussions. In her talk she showed us that there was a large deficit in fundamental frequency processing in concussed athletes; which is a cue for auditory processing of daily noise (Kraus et al., 2016). Furthermore, she showed us that when athletes recover from concussions their fundamental frequency processing improves significantly, and additionally the same results were true for recovering children as mentioned in Kraus et al (2016). Despite this, Krizman mentioned that some individuals take a very long time to recover from concussions and presented possible treatment options that could involve the use of rhythm therapy. Specifically, she mentioned that when people get concussions it disturbs the synchrony of neural networks in the brain, which is why they have decreased auditory processing and additionally why rhythm may help to recover this synchronicity. Another interesting note that she made was that women seemed to not have as significant deficits in auditory processing after concussions, to which she hypothesized might be due to the effects that estrogen has on the brain.
After listening to Dr. Krizman's speech, which focused on auditory processing, and treatments involving rhythm, it reminded me of a news article I had read a few months back titled “Study suggests 40Hz sensory stimulation may benefit some Alzheimer's patients for years” by Orenstein, 2025. This study was based on findings in mice that specific sensory stimulations had improved the synchronicity and re-facilitated network connections after exposure to 40Hz gamma frequencies which correlate to distinct neural rhythms (Orenstein, 2025; Orenstein, 2024). The current study performed at MIT examined how 40Hz light/sound simulation might impact individuals with mild Alzheimer's disease (n=5) (Orenstein, 2025). This was a longitudinal study that measured the impacts of the stimulation 3 times (beginning, three months and thirty months) after the trials initially started (Orenstein, 2025). Despite it being a small sample they found that women showed slower decline in cognitive tests and had increased circadian rhythm and brain wave responsiveness (n=3) (Orenstein, 2025). Additionally they mentioned that, of the two participants that volunteered to give blood samples they found a notable decrease in pTau217 which is a typical marker of Alzheimer's development (Orenstein, 2025). However they found that the 2 male participants did not show improvement in cognitive assessments and actually declined in brain responsiveness (Orenstein, 2025).
I thought that these findings were interesting because it shows that rhythm may play a large role in treating brain injury as well as brain diseases like Alzheimer's (Orenstein, 2025). Taking this into consideration it may be interesting to look at the effects of neural frequency rhythms in the treatment of other brain diseases or damage. Another interesting factor about both studies was the noticeable difference among results between gender (Orenstein, 2025). As Dr Krizman's speech mentioned, females seemed to suffer less auditory deficits than males, while Orenstein (2025) highlighted that males did not get the same benefits from the stimulation treatment as women did. While Orenstein (2025), believed that this difference were not due to gender, I feel it may be an interesting area to study in both concussion and Alzheimer's pathology, as it is very interesting that females tend to not suffer as bad of effects of concussion and additionally seem to benefit more from neural rhythm stimulation.
References
Kraus, N., Thompson, E. C., Krizman, J., Cook, K., White-Schwoch, T., & LaBella, C. R. (2016). Auditory biological marker of concussion in children. Scientific Reports, 6, 39009. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep39009
Orenstein, D. (2025, November 14th). Study suggests 40Hz sensory stimulation may benefit some Alzheimer’s patients for years. MIT News. https://news.mit.edu/2025/study-suggests-40hz-sensory-stimulation-may-benefit-some-alzheimers-patients-1114
Orenstein, D. (2024, March 7th).How sensory gamma rhythm stimulation clears amyloid in Alzheimer’s mice. MIT News. https://news.mit.edu/2024/how-sensory-gamma-rhythm-stimulation-clears-amyloid-alzheimers-0307
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