Can a prescription for music therapy help memory deficits in Alzheimer’s disease? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Most people have memories associated with music, and such associations may be helpful in delaying worsening or even improving memory function in people with Alzheimer’s disease. That’s the hope of Alex Pantelyat, a neurologist and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine.

Pantelyat: We are exposing people to eight weeks of twice a week music therapy delivered to their home via Zoom, by a professional music therapist with at least ten years of dementia care experience, and we are of course doing memory testing, other cognitive testing at baseline, before the study begins, and are getting an MRI scan, where we are evaluating the extent of network damage that they have at the time, using both structural MRI and functional MRI, when they’re at rest and when they’re doing a task.   :29

Pantelyat says a music intervention is individually tailored so people are exposed to music they find personally meaningful. He says at the very least, people report enjoying the sessions. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.