Wednesday 5 September 2012

Singing for Dementia

Reading an out of date New Scientist (22 May 2010) I found a story about dementia saying that "singing to elderly people with dementia helps them form new memories" (22 May 2010 pg12 by Nora Schultz). It has also been proved that "people with Alzheimer's disease are better at remembering events from their past when music is played" (same reference).

The breakthrough in this story (or was a breakthrough back in 2010!!) is that sufferers of dementia find it extremely difficult to remember things that have happened very recently i.e. what they have had for lunch, but can remember past events that mean a lot to them/ well in the past when stimulated.

A trial was carried out by "Brandon Ally and his team at Boston University" who were "inspired inspired by the report of a man with Alzheimer's who could recall current events if his daughter sang the news to him to the tune of familiar pop songs" (same reference).

What they found from their trial of "13 people with Alzheimer's" that by giving "the lyrics from 40 unfamiliar children's song to read, half accompanied by the actual song and half by spoken word" and the results showed that "those with Alzheimer's were able to recognise 40% of the original lyrics that had been accompanied by song but only 28% of those read to them."

Granted that this isn't a huge increase in the percentages it is a significant difference of 12%. But it was also reported that "we don't yet know why singing should help, but Ally said that music engages areas of the brain, including subcortical regions, that are typically spared until later on in dementia."

But singing has also been used in other ways for dementia sufferers such as in getting patients to "cope better with their symptoms and improve their quality of life" (http://tinyurl.com/cem7tpc).

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