Making music to deal with dementia

UQ NEWS online

Dr Felicity Baker, from UQ's School of Music, is investigating how music therapy might improve partner satisfaction by providing opportunities for the sharing of memories associated with certain songs.

The project will involve having a music therapist go into the home and show the spouse how they can use music as a way of creating meaningful experiences with their partner with Alzheimer's or another dementia.

People with dementia have difficulty with short term memory and lose the ability to communicate verbally. However, research shows that they really respond to music because it taps into automatic memory

When they listen to a piece of music that they have used in their past, it can stimulate the recall of those memories, which then helps them to talk about those memories which then helps with interaction.
.....read the whole story