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This study was a two-armed parallel group design aimed at testing real world effectiveness of a music therapy (MT) intervention for children with severe neurological disorders. The control group received only the standard neurorestoration program and the experimental group received an additional MT “Auditory Attention plus Communication protocol” just before the usual occupational and speech therapy. Multivariate Item Response Theory (MIRT) identified a neuropsychological status-latent variable manifested in all children and which exhibited highly significant changes only in the experimental group. Changes in brain plasticity also occurred in the experimental group, as evidenced using a Mismatch Event Related paradigm which revealed significant post intervention positive responses in the latency range between 308 and 400 ms in frontal regions. LORETA EEG source analysis identified prefrontal and midcingulate regions as differentially activated by the MT in the experimental group. Taken together, our results showing improved attention and communication as well as changes in brain plasticity in children with severe neurological impairments, confirm the importance of MT for the rehabilitation of patients across a wide range of dysfunctions.

A damage assessment survey of 169 low-rise reinforced concrete buildings was conducted following the 16 April 2016 Ecuador earthquake. Forty-four percent of the buildings surveyed sustained severe structural damage. Using the collected data, seismic vulnerability indices were calculated to examine their correlation with damage observations. It was found that 92% of the buildings with observed severe structural damage had calculated wall and column index pairs (WI, CI) that satisfied the relation WI+CI/2 < 0.2%. The frequency of damage was lower for higher-priority index values, defined as the sum of CI+WI. Furthermore, frequency of damage in buildings with captive columns was observed to decrease with window height-to-column height ratios of more than 20%.

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