Music’s ability to trigger our deepest memories and
emotions could help improve quality of life for people with dementia
Anyone who’s known a loved one with dementia can
testify to its cruelty – the frustration, anger and sadness that comes from
watching someone you love slip away.
Dementia, the umbrella term for conditions with a
severe decline in mental function, can be an incredibly painful experience,
marked by confusion, distress and a profound sense of loss. It’s also
increasingly common. Dementia is now the second
leading cause of death in Australia.
There is no cure, but researchers, including
Professor Felicity Baker, co-director of the University of Melbourne’s National
Music Therapy Research Unit, are looking for new ways to help people cope.
Professor Baker studies how music, especially
singing and songwriting, can be used to treat people with a range of conditions
– from young people with traumatic brain injuries to adults with substance
abuse issues. She says music therapy can be a way for people living with dementia and
their carers – to deal with its symptoms.
“We know
that managing dementia with medication actually can make people more confused,”
she says. “We need to be creative in finding ways that people with dementia can
manage the challenges they face, and to address distressing symptoms such as
agitation and depression.”
Professor Baker recently developed a songwriting
program for people living with dementia and their carers at Caladenia, a care
centre based in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. Participants worked together in small
groups to write and compose songs with a music therapist.
In one 10-week session, participants wrote seven
songs. They sang about family, cruise ship holidays and staying out until the
sun comes up. They thought about, talked about and even argued about songs they
created, from the lyrics to the musical direction.
Even participants who normally struggle with
conversation and interaction were able to work together on a music project.
“With music, they’re really engaged in a way that
they’re not in other activities,” says Professor Baker. “They’re offering their
ideas and perspectives. They’re happy to argue with each other about what they
think the lyrics should be and whether the lyric fits the melody.”
But what really struck Professor Baker was that
participants remembered the music they created.
“There’s this assumption that people with dementia
can’t learn, that they’re just losing memories,” says Professor Baker. “But
what we found is that they were actually remembering lyrics from week to week.”
Professor Baker’s findings will be used to inform
her next project, a large-scale study funded by a grant from the National
Health and Medical Research Council. She hopes to find out more about how
collaborative music therapy, such as group music therapy or choir groups, might
affect the cognitive function, depression, neurological symptoms and quality of
life of people with the condition.
The project will include a major randomised control
trial, comparing standard dementia care practices with three music-based
interventions – group music therapy, larger choir groups and a combination of
both.
There’s no doubt that music is a huge part of our
lives. The simple act of listening to a song can evoke memories and emotions of
heartbreak, love affairs, places or people in our past. And scientists, too,
have long known that music has a powerful effect on brain function.
Unlike other stimulants, Professor Baker says,
music engages all parts of our brain.
“When we engage in some activities, specific neural
networks are activated. But when we listen to music, we actually engage quite a
distributed network of neuronal activity.”
Professor Baker was struck by how residents at
Caladenia Dementia Care could remember the lyrics they wrote to songs from week
to week. Picture: Supplied
Studies have also shown that the act of creating
music – songwriting, singing or playing an instrument – is more effective in
stimulating our brain than just listening to music. In other words, it’s more
stimulating to write and sing a song than listen to your favourite album.
“When we sing, we’re stimulating our auditory
system, we’re stimulating our physical system,” she says. “When we use language
in song, it’s tapping into our emotions and it’s tapping into physiological
processes like our heart rate and our breathing.”
Since music is an emotional and physical stimulant,
Professor Baker wants to see how much it can trigger memory function for people
living with dementia.
“The theory is that pairing music and lyrics with
an emotional experience can reach the threshold for memory,” she says. “It
connects people and helps them to remember.”
A
2009 study by the University of California, Davis, for
example, found that the area of the brain that holds our memories and links
music to emotions is also the last part of the brain to atrophy during
Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.
Professor Baker’s research project is the
Australian arm of a much larger study into the effects of music therapy on
people living with dementia. Work in Australia will involve 500 participants,
but academic colleagues in Norway are leading similar and even larger
initiatives.
“It’s going to be the biggest music therapy study
in dementia care ever and it’s certainly a game-changer for the dementia
field,” she says.
Previous literary reviews about the effects of
music therapy have been promising but inconclusive, citing the need for larger
studies and more evidence.
“Worldwide, we have amassed a lot of small scale
studies that show it’s effective but nothing big that will help us be taken
more seriously when healthcare policies are being made.”
The NHMRC grant used to fund Professor Baker’s
research is part of the Boosting
Dementia Research Initiative, which gives
$200 million to dementia research projects, including several other studies
based at the University of Melbourne. Nearly 1 million
Australians are expected to have dementia by 2050, and health policymakers are
wondering how the system will deal with it.
“Dementia is going to be a challenge for this
country,” says Professor Baker. “And they want to invest extra funding into
projects that will help us with this massive problem that’s ahead of us.”
SOURCE: Kate Stanton, University of Melbourne
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