Neglect often manifests following a right hemisphere stroke, and it is a strong predictor of poor rehabilitation outcome. Although many neglect interventions exist, systematic reviews repeatedly highlight that they yield limited clinical effectiveness and that there is little to no evidence of any functional gains.

Drawing on recent successful case study pilot work, the aim of the present study is to investigate the impact of an active music-making intervention compared with a control.

Stroke survivors with a diagnosis of neglect will be invited to participate in an assessor-blind, within-subject, home program study that lasts 12 weeks and comprises four 3-week phases: baseline, control, intervention, and follow-up.

The intervention and control each comprise six 30-minute sessions plus daily homework. The intervention involves playing scales and familiar melodies on a horizontally-aligned instrument from the stroke survivor’s right side into their left neglected space; the control involves playing novel rhythmic patterns on a single drum at midline.

We hypothesise that the stroke survivors will perform better after the intervention than after the control on clinical neglect tests and on an assessment of their activities-of-daily-living.

By validating and extending published case study work, the knowledge gained from this study has the capacity to pave the way for future clinical interventions and deepen our understanding of the use of music as a clinical tool in neurorehabilitation settings.