Why is music so important for memory care patients?
Our long-term and memory care facilities offer ambiance music regularly and live music monthly. It helps our residents to live meaningful lives and connect with their memories and emotions.
Dementia affects the patient’s ability to speak and connect with others, but when organizing words in sentences seems impossible, you still have a door to reach your loved one: music.
In 2021, the Journalist Anderson Cooper covered the preparation of the legendary singer Tony Bennett for his presentation with Lady Gaga. Diagnosed with dementia in 2016, Bennett struggled to keep a conversation. Still, when the first chords of his all-time successes played, the impossible happened: he was again the confident and irresistible interpreter of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
At Via memory care facilities in Des Moines and Carlisle, we always witness this “magic.” Residents who barely communicate sing along whenever we have music on, but why does it happen?
Think of our brain as a dresser: it stores knowledge and information in different drawers. Alzheimer’s and other diseases that cause dementia easily access the drawers with speaking skills and recent memories.
Long-term memories are more challenging to access by sickened cells and tend to be affected in the late stages of the disease.
The “drawers” where music is stored are even more out of reach. They are not locked and can eventually be damaged, but it’s unlikely.
Five years after his diagnosis and with the disease taking his tool on many of his abilities, Mr. Bennett performed in sold-out sessions at Radio Music City, a stage most singers can only dream about. It was possible because while his brain area, known as the hippocampus, was affected by Alzheimer’s disease, his MMAs (Musical Memory Areas) were perfectly functional.
Our brain stores music in a couple of different areas, and one of them shares space with emotion. That’s why music is a door to reconnecting with your loved one. You play the music, and the dementia patient’s brain retrieves the tune, the lyrics, and in many cases, emotions associated with the song.
If Humphrey Bogart’s and Ingrid Bergman’s characters in Casablanca will always have Paris, the rest of us have one reassurance about dementia: we will always have the music.
Some links you may love:
Music: The Last Thing We Forget, by Francine Foo and Elizabeth Johnson
https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2017.00005
Music Helps Patients with Dementia Connect with Loved Ones
CBS Sunday Morning archives: Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga