Effects of Music Listening on Postural Balance in Adolescents with Visual Impairment

We aimed to investigate the effect of music on visually impaired adolescents' postural balance across different somatosensory and vestibular input conditions. We recruited 19 adolescent participants (9 males, 10 females) with severe congenital visual impairment. We recorded their mean center of pressure velocity (CoP_Vm) during static upright bipedal standing under somatosensory (firm and foam surfaces) and vestibular (head facing forward (HFF), head rotated 90° to the right (HRR), and head rotated 90° to the left (HRL)) perturbations in three auditory conditions (no-music, listening to Jupiter, and listening to their preferred music). We found that CoP_Vm decreased significantly when listening to both Jupiter and preferred music, compared to the no-music condition on both firm (p < .05) and foam (p < .001) surfaces and with the HFF (p < .05), rotated to the right (p < .001) or rotated to the left (p < .001). Moreover, CoP_Vm values increased significantly with somatosensory manipulation (p < .001) in all the auditory conditions and with vestibular manipulation (p < .01) only in the no-music condition. We concluded that listening to both Jupiter and preferred music improved postural balance in visually impaired adolescents, even in challenged postural conditions.