Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine, in Massachusetts report that the benefits include greater understanding of the pathophysiology of dementia.

First, the details.

• 20 patients with Alzheimer’s disease and 20 healthy individuals were assigned to become familiar with 40 songs.
  • 20 lyrics accompanied by a sung recording
  • 20 lyrics accompanied by a spoken recording
• After each presentation, participants were asked to indicate whether they were previously familiar with the song they had just heard.

And, the results.

• Among patients with Alzheimer’s disease, accuracy was greater when the lyrics were sung vs spoken.
• In healthy adults, there was no difference.

The bottom line?

Musical mnemonics have a long and diverse history of popular use.

In this study, the authors concluded, “Patients with Alzheimer’s disease performed better on a task of recognition memory for the lyrics of songs when those lyrics were accompanied by a sung recording than… a spoken recording.”

Contrary to popular belief, there was no effect among healthy adults.

It appears that the “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 Alzheimer’s disease,” say the authors.

5/19/10 20:53 JR