Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts
Friday, April 29, 2011
Music Has Power
The Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, a member of the Beth Abraham Family of Health Services, is a nonprofit 501 (c)(3) agency founded in 1995 to restore, maintain and improve people's physical, emotional and neurologic functioning through the systematic use of music. For more information, visit www.imnf.org or call (718) 519-5840.
Music Memory and the Mind
Opera star Deborah Voight performs for Alzheimer's patients. Discussion follows with Oliver Sacks and other Neuroscientists.
Oliver Sacks - Musicophilia - Alzheimer's/The Power of Music
Oliver Sacks talks about Alzheimer's and the power of music.
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400033539
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Music Training May Help Keep Aging Brain Healthy >> Caring.com
Reposted from:
Caring.com
MONDAY, April 25 (HealthDay News) -- Music lessons may help keep the brain healthy as people grow older, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the University of Kansas Medical Center divided 70 healthy adults, ages 60 to 83, into three groups based on their amount of musical experience: no musical training, one to nine years of music lessons, and at least 10 years of musical study.
More than half of those with a music background studied piano, about one-quarter played woodwind instruments such as the flute or clarinet, and others played string instruments, percussion or brass instruments.
The participants -- who had similar fitness and education levels and were free of Alzheimer's disease -- were given several cognitive tests. Those with the greatest amount of musical experience did best on these tests of mental acuity, followed by those with less musical study and those who never took music lessons.
Compared to non-musicians, the people with a high degree of musical experience had much higher scores on the cognitive tests, including those related to visuospatial memory, naming objects, and the brain's ability to adapt to new information (cognitive flexibility).
The benefits of musical study were still apparent even in those who no longer played an instrument, the researchers said.
The study appears online in the journal Neuropsychology.
"Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of aging," lead researcher Brenda Hanna-Pladdy said in a journal news release.
Hanna-Pladdy, now an assistant professor in neurology at Emory University School of Medicine, added, "Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older."
The Society for Neuroscience outlines ways to keep your brain healthy as you age.
SOURCE: Neuropsychology, news release, April 20, 2011
Copyright ©2011 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Caring.com
MONDAY, April 25 (HealthDay News) -- Music lessons may help keep the brain healthy as people grow older, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the University of Kansas Medical Center divided 70 healthy adults, ages 60 to 83, into three groups based on their amount of musical experience: no musical training, one to nine years of music lessons, and at least 10 years of musical study.
More than half of those with a music background studied piano, about one-quarter played woodwind instruments such as the flute or clarinet, and others played string instruments, percussion or brass instruments.
The participants -- who had similar fitness and education levels and were free of Alzheimer's disease -- were given several cognitive tests. Those with the greatest amount of musical experience did best on these tests of mental acuity, followed by those with less musical study and those who never took music lessons.
Compared to non-musicians, the people with a high degree of musical experience had much higher scores on the cognitive tests, including those related to visuospatial memory, naming objects, and the brain's ability to adapt to new information (cognitive flexibility).
The benefits of musical study were still apparent even in those who no longer played an instrument, the researchers said.
The study appears online in the journal Neuropsychology.
"Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of aging," lead researcher Brenda Hanna-Pladdy said in a journal news release.
Hanna-Pladdy, now an assistant professor in neurology at Emory University School of Medicine, added, "Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older."
The Society for Neuroscience outlines ways to keep your brain healthy as you age.
SOURCE: Neuropsychology, news release, April 20, 2011
Copyright ©2011 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Music aids Alzheimer's patients in remembering new information
Music aids Alzheimer's patients in remembering new information
Boston University Medical Center
Public release: 12-May-2010
Contact: Gina DiGravio
gina.digravio@bmc.org
617-638-8480
(Boston) – Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have shown that patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are better able to remember new verbal information when it is provided in the context of music even when compared to healthy, older adults. The findings, which currently appear on-line in Neuropsychologia, offer possible applications in treating and caring for patients with AD.
AD, the most common form of dementia, is characterized by a general, progressive decline in cognitive function that typically presents first as impaired episodic memory. The onset and rate of this decline tends to vary across cognitive domains, and some functions may be preferentially spared in patients with AD.
To determine whether music can enhance new learning of information, AD patients and healthy controls were presented with either the words spoken, or the lyrics sung with full musical accompaniment along with the printed lyrics on a computer screen. The participants were presented visually with the lyrics to 40 songs. Twenty of the song lyrics were accompanied by their corresponding sung recording and 20 were accompanied by their spoken recording.
After each presentation, participants were asked to indicate whether or not they were previously familiar with the song they had just heard. The BUSM researchers found accuracy was greater in the sung condition than in the spoken condition for AD patients but not for healthy older controls.
"Our results confirmed our hypothesis that patients with AD performed better on a task of recognition memory for the lyrics of songs when those lyrics were accompanied by a sung recording than when they were accompanied by a spoken recording," said senior author Brandon Ally, PhD, an assistant professor of neurology and director of Neuropsychology Research at the BUSM Center for Translational Cognitive Neuroscience. "However, contrary to our hypothesis, healthy older adults showed no such benefit of music, he added.
These results suggest a fundamental difference in the encoding and retrieval processes for musical versus nonmusical stimuli between patients with AD and healthy older adults. "Music processing encompasses a complex neural network that recruits from all areas of the brain, that are affected at a slower rate in AD compared to the areas of the brain typically associated with memory. Thus, stimuli accompanied by music and a sung recording may create a more robust association at encoding than do stimuli accompanied by only a spoken recording in patients with AD," explained Ally.
According to the researchers understanding the nature of musical processing and memory in patients with AD may allow the development of effective and comprehensive therapies for this increasingly prevalent disease.
This research was supported by National Institute on Aging.
Boston University Medical Center
Public release: 12-May-2010
Contact: Gina DiGravio
gina.digravio@bmc.org
617-638-8480
(Boston) – Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have shown that patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are better able to remember new verbal information when it is provided in the context of music even when compared to healthy, older adults. The findings, which currently appear on-line in Neuropsychologia, offer possible applications in treating and caring for patients with AD.
AD, the most common form of dementia, is characterized by a general, progressive decline in cognitive function that typically presents first as impaired episodic memory. The onset and rate of this decline tends to vary across cognitive domains, and some functions may be preferentially spared in patients with AD.
To determine whether music can enhance new learning of information, AD patients and healthy controls were presented with either the words spoken, or the lyrics sung with full musical accompaniment along with the printed lyrics on a computer screen. The participants were presented visually with the lyrics to 40 songs. Twenty of the song lyrics were accompanied by their corresponding sung recording and 20 were accompanied by their spoken recording.
After each presentation, participants were asked to indicate whether or not they were previously familiar with the song they had just heard. The BUSM researchers found accuracy was greater in the sung condition than in the spoken condition for AD patients but not for healthy older controls.
"Our results confirmed our hypothesis that patients with AD performed better on a task of recognition memory for the lyrics of songs when those lyrics were accompanied by a sung recording than when they were accompanied by a spoken recording," said senior author Brandon Ally, PhD, an assistant professor of neurology and director of Neuropsychology Research at the BUSM Center for Translational Cognitive Neuroscience. "However, contrary to our hypothesis, healthy older adults showed no such benefit of music, he added.
These results suggest a fundamental difference in the encoding and retrieval processes for musical versus nonmusical stimuli between patients with AD and healthy older adults. "Music processing encompasses a complex neural network that recruits from all areas of the brain, that are affected at a slower rate in AD compared to the areas of the brain typically associated with memory. Thus, stimuli accompanied by music and a sung recording may create a more robust association at encoding than do stimuli accompanied by only a spoken recording in patients with AD," explained Ally.
According to the researchers understanding the nature of musical processing and memory in patients with AD may allow the development of effective and comprehensive therapies for this increasingly prevalent disease.
This research was supported by National Institute on Aging.
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