Music has a deep connection to our emotions and memories. Recalling old memories and emotions of past events is the universal reaction to hearing an old tune. This connection between music and memory is so powerful that even Alzheimer’s patients experience it. In addition to helping patients reminisce, it can alter their moods. Depending on the music, it can calm them when they’re anxious or uplift when depressed. Music has been used to stimulate interaction and coordinate body movement.
Music promotes memory association because lasting and strong memories have an emotional component. People experience countless inconsequential events in their lives that are never stored in long-term memory. Those that are stored usually have a strong emotional component. This is why we remember the happiest moments of our lives as well as the most traumatic. Music plays on the emotions. This in turn pulls up emotion based memories.
The process of triggering memories with music requires very little or no cognitive processing. This is why music is so effective at helping people with Alzheimer’s recall memories and emotions. Beyond the recollection of memories, music also increases engagement in the form of singing and dancing. Again this requires very little cognitive involvement because music directly influences the motor control areas of the brain. This makes music an effective way to reach people with Alzheimer’s disease.
The effect of music is dramatically demonstrated by this video of an Alzheimer’s patient. Henry is transformed in minutes from a person who can’t answer simple yes and no questions and who can’t recognize his daughter, into an animated and engaged person happily humming to the music he hears. This effect continues to persist after the music headphone is removed so that he can be questioned about his experience. Henry answers the questions with coherent sentences. He was able to explain his love for music and talk about his favorite artist. Clearly, a great deal of information is still present within his mind, and music was the stimulus that brought it out. Somehow the music engaged his higher mental functioning as well.
To learn more about Alzheimer’s disease and how to cope with its effects on a loved one, please contact us.
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