Part VI introduction: listening to and making music facilitates brain recovery processes.

Emerging research over the last decade has shown that long-term music training and skill learning can be a strong stimulator for neuroplastic changes in the developing as well as adult brain. Making music places unique demands on the nervous system, leading to strong coupling of perception and action mediated by sensory, motor, and multimodal integrative regions distributed throughout the brain. Furthermore, listening to music and making music (“musicking”) provokes motion, improves and increases between-subject communication and interaction, and is considered to be and experienced as a joyous and rewarding activity. Several reports in this volume have now shown that listening to music and musicking may have the power to make rehabilitation processes not only more enjoyable, but also possibly more effective. Why is music so special and how does listening to and making music achieve its rehabilitative effects? Music is a strong multimodal stimulus that simultaneously transmits visual, auditory, and motoric information to a specialized brain network consisting of frontotemporo-parietal regions whose components are also part of the putative human mirrorneuron system. Among other functions, this system might support the coupling between perceptual events (visual or auditory) and motor