How does music benefit Alzheimer's patients?

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - A recent study offers new insight into how our favorite music is connected to our memories and personalities, and how these connections can help make our lives better. A favorite or familiar song can remind you of a specific moment in your life.

This is not just an imaginary feeling, but there is science behind how our minds link music to memory. There has always been a constructive connection between music and Alzheimer's or dementia patients.

It turns out that repeatedly listening to people's favorite music helps stimulate neural pathways in the brain, which contributes to maintaining higher levels of performance, according to Michael Thut, senior author of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Toronto. The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease in November.

The results could support the possibility of including music-based therapy in the treatment of patients with cognitive impairment in the future. The most noticeable changes were in the prefrontal cortex, known as the brain's control center, where decisions are made, social behavior is moderated, personality is expressed, and complex mental behavior is planned.

As soon as the patients heard music that meant to them personally, a musical neural network connecting different areas of the brain fired. This information comes after patients underwent an MRI scan before and after listening to music.

The result was different, of course, when the patients heard new, unfamiliar music, which only triggered a specific part of the brain that had been tuned to listening. Only 14 people participated in the study, including 6 musicians, who listened to playlists specially curated for them for an hour a day, for three weeks.

“Whether you've been a musician your whole life or you've never played an instrument, music is key to accessing your memory, specifically your prefrontal cortex,” Thut said. Keep listening to the music you've loved all your life.

Your all-time favorite songs, those tracks that have special meaning to you... a common ground that unites the world's music lovers. Music is linked to our desire to communicate, tell stories, and share values ​​with others, and this has deep roots in early human cultures.

This is probably why it is not surprising that we, as humans, have formed connections with certain genres of music or specific musical styles as a means of expressing ourselves that reflects our personalities. A recent study covering 6 continents, in which more than 350,000 participants participated, showed that personality diversity is linked to specific musical preferences.

During the study, people from more than 50 countries self-reported enjoying 23 different types of music while completing a personality questionnaire. The second assessment asked participants to listen to short clips of music from 16 different musical genres and sub-genres of Western music, and asked them to rate them.

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology last February. The results revealed direct links between sociable extroverts and soft, sophisticated and contemporary music.

“We were surprised by how much these patterns between music and personality replicate across the world,” study author David Greenberg, an honorary research associate at the University of Cambridge and a postdoctoral researcher at Bar-Ilan University, said in a statement. He noted: “People may be divided by geography, language and culture, but if an introvert in one part of the world likes the same music as an introvert in another part of the world, this indicates that music can form a very strong bridge.”

"Music helps people understand each other and find common ground."