Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias can lead to significant impairments in cognition, mood, and memory. Music therapy offers many benefits to these populations, including improved verbalizations, elevated mood, and increased arousal. Neuroscience research shows that music therapy can slow the disease progression, help maintain functioning, and improve your loved ones quality of life.
Alzheimer's, Dementia, and Memory Care
Services
We come to you. We provide individual or group sessions at homes, facilities, or hospitals. We can include family or caregivers in the session upon request.
How We Help
Music activates the body and the mind. Music provides stimulation, organization, and engages shared networks in the brain including the systems responsible for emotion, memory retrieval, and motivation. Music therapy uniquely accesses brain systems that process music and non-musical cognitive functioning; facilitates long-term memory recall; and assists in the retention of new information (Thaut 2010).
A recent literature review of music therapy used with Alzheimer’s patients concluded that “Music therapy can be considered a non-pharmacological intervention which has the potential effects to reduce cognitive decline, improve neuropsychiatric symptoms, and enhance the quality of life of AD” (Fang et al. 2017)
Common Goal Areas
Attention
Arousal/Orientation
Executive Functioning
Memory
Watch as our friends at Neurologic Music Therapy Services of Arizona demonstrate NMT techniques with this population:
