Alzheimers Information

Boston University neuroscientist Brandon Ally reports that he and some colleagues tested a small group diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s and 14 healthy adults to compare how they recognized song lyrics. All participants were shown the lyrics on a computer screen but in half the group, a woman “sang” the words and in the other half, she “spoke” the words.

The early Alzheimers patients recognized 40% of the sung words versus 28% of spoken words. The control group didn’t show that much of a difference recognizing 77% of sung versus 74% of spoken.

So the question posed by this study is whether music can help Alzheimer’s patients with memory retention?

In my mother’s case, one of the few things she still remembers are the words to songs. She doesn’t recognize the grandchildren, but she does remember the words to songs from 70 years ago with almost perfect recall. And she can be found in the front row of the sing-songs in the nursing home belting them out with her amazingly clear voice.

Bottom Line

Nothing scientific (although a good question) here for you to do but something to keep in mind about making things rhyme or humming instructions in humorous ways if the information may be important. It may help ….