First Tones: Artistic Communal Practices for 4 and 5 Year Old Children

This project aims to develop therapeutic communal music interventions to support the mental health of preschool-aged children, identifying the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying these effects and comparing brain responses to communal versus non-communal music. The central hypothesis is that group musical practice will strengthen mental health indicators, promoting a sense of belonging and stimulating brain areas associated with reward. Communal singing interventions are economically viable and have demonstrated significant benefits in several populations. The research intends to fill gaps in the literature by identifying psychological mechanisms underlying the benefits of music and developing an assessment tool for the sense of belonging in preschoolers. Innovation also lies in exploring the emerging concept of communal music. The study will involve 30 children between the ages of 4 and 5, divided into an intervention group and a control group. Pre- and post-intervention assessments over a 10-week period will include behavioral, psychiatric, brain connectivity, and brain activity measures. In summary, this project seeks to develop accessible communal music interventions to enhance the mental health of 4- and 5-year-old children. Our central hypothesis is that communal musical practice improves mental health markers in our sample by promoting a sense of belonging and differentially activating putative reward regions in the brain. By enhancing the sense of belonging and generating feelings of reward, we anticipate that the behavioral and psychiatric symptoms experienced by the target population will be attenuated. Our hypothesis was partially formulated based on recently obtained pilot data suggesting that communal music has protective effects against negative affect caused by ostracism, as well as literature on communal singing in other populations. The rationale for this proposed project is that understanding the therapeutic value of communal musical practice and identifying the mechanisms by which this occurs is likely to provide a strong scientific foundation for new strategies to support the mental health of at-risk groups and potentially reduce health disparities within these populations.

NCT Number	NCT07394465
Lead Sponsor	Harvard University Collaborators: Federal University of Mato Grosso, Universidade Federal do ABC
Conditions	Mental Health
Enrollment	46 participants
Start Date	2024-02-26
Primary Completion	2024-12-19 (estimated)
Study Completion	2024-12-19 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2026-02-23