Singing Therapy for Rehabilitating Facial Mimicry in Parkinson's Disease: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Parkinson\'s disease can reduce facial expression and change the voice, making it harder to communicate emotions. This study examined whether practising facial and vocal imitation through speech and singing could improve facial expression and emotional communication in people with Parkinson\'s disease. Participants were assigned by chance to one of two 13-week programs. In Singing Imitation Therapy, participants watched and listened to recordings of emotional speech and song and copied the facial and vocal expressions. In Singing Observation Therapy, participants watched and listened to the recordings without being instructed to copy them. The main hypothesis was that imitation would lead to greater improvements in facial expression and automatic facial responses to other people\'s emotional expressions than observation alone.