Effect of Music Therapy Combined with Free Position Delivery on Labor Pain and Birth Outcomes.

Objective: At present, the clinical effect of music therapy combined with free position to assist delivery is rarely reported. Based on evidence-based nursing, this study is aimed at exploring the effect of the combination of music therapy and free position delivery on labor pain and maternal and fetal outcomes. Methods: A total of 440 primiparas with vaginal delivery in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University between July 2018 and July 2019 were selected. They were divided into music therapy, free position delivery group (n = 201) and traditional delivery group (n = 239). Subsequently, the two groups were compared in terms of the Chinese Perception of Labor Pain Questionnaire (PLPQ) score, bleeding amount at 2 hours after birth, perineal injury, labor stage duration, and 1 minute Apgar score. Results: The combination group had better results of the Chinese PLPQ score, postpartum hemorrhage, and perineum condition. However, compared with traditional delivery, a longer duration of the first stage and total stage of labor was found in the combination group. Music therapy combined with free position delivery required less medical intervention during delivery, and there was no significant difference in 1 minute Apgar score between the two groups. Conclusions: Music therapy combined with free position delivery, an intervention based on evidence-based nursing, can effectively reduce maternal labor pain, postpartum hemorrhage, soft birth canal injury, and medical intervention during labor. It is, therefore, a safe intervention to assist delivery.

Language and Sensory Neural Plasticity in the Superior Temporal Cortex of the Deaf.

Visual stimuli are known to activate the auditory cortex of deaf people, presenting evidence of cross-modal plasticity. However, the mechanisms underlying such plasticity are poorly understood. In this functional MRI study, we presented two types of visual stimuli, language stimuli (words, sign language, and lip-reading) and a general stimulus (checkerboard) to investigate neural reorganization in the superior temporal cortex (STC) of deaf subjects and hearing controls. We found that only in the deaf subjects, all visual stimuli activated the STC. The cross-modal activation induced by the checkerboard was mainly due to a sensory component via a feed-forward pathway from the thalamus and primary visual cortex, positively correlated with duration of deafness, indicating a consequence of pure sensory deprivation. In contrast, the STC activity evoked by language stimuli was functionally connected to both the visual cortex and the frontotemporal areas, which were highly correlated with the learning of sign language, suggesting a strong language component via a possible feedback modulation. While the sensory component exhibited specificity to features of a visual stimulus (e.g., selective to the form of words, bodies, or faces) and the language (semantic) component appeared to recruit a common frontotemporal neural network, the two components converged to the STC and caused plasticity with different multivoxel activity patterns. In summary, the present study showed plausible neural pathways for auditory reorganization and correlations of activations of the reorganized cortical areas with developmental factors and provided unique evidence towards the understanding of neural circuits involved in cross-modal plasticity.