Can a playlist save you from dementia?
mainResearch in Australia suggests that certain kinds of music can help dementia sufferers to delay memory loss.
Read more and listen here.
Comments
MOST READ TODAY:
-
Album Of The Week
The anniversary that failed
From the last Lebrecht Album of the Week…
-
News
It’s curtains for violin comedians
The Chinese-Australian pair of comedy fiddlers have called…
-
Daily Comfort Zone
It’s a first for Itzhak Perlman
We’ve been given to understand that tonight’s Lebrecht…
-
Daily Comfort Zone
Triple Bach: Does it get any better?
Pablo Casals conducts a gloriously old-fashioned 1971 performance…
This work is actually building on studies which have been conducted overseas. The documentary is very moving indeed.
A study proposal: does hard rock accelerate the onset of dementia?
No, but the drugs and alcohol abuse correlated with it do.
I mean a real scientific study. In hard rock the afferent input to the brain is monstrous, tinnitus and deafness are obvious sequelae but the impact in cognitive processes is as far as I know not properly investigated. Control groups would correct for life style factors, recreational drugs and alcohol are not a privilege of hard rockers.
Agreed, but I don’t think anyone, including the head rock fans, even consider it to be a mind refining exercise, but enjoy it as a distraction and diving away from the real and sensitive aural world. It’s a free world.
What should concern us is peer pressure among teenagers, who feel they must fit in and comply with the applied pressure to consume what they are brainwashed to consume, subsequently damaging their mental and physiological condition.
One does not have to research that, since the debilitating effect can be observed immediately and irrefutably.
Our observational capacity in daily life is biased by prejudice (nothing necessarily wrong with prejudices in the daily life, I am proud of my prejudices, continuous observations shows that my prejudices are mostly right, and as a rational individual I feel no shame in changing my mind when evidence demands it), and good scientific methodology can support a demand on official warnings on that pest as we see now in cigarette packages.
Oliver Sacks wrote and spoke a lot about the healing power of music on the mind.
The responses of the patients in the program reminded me of the film “Awakenings” about the work of Sachs. They awoke from years (some of them) in a catatonic state, but this was sadly short-lived for most of them.
Interesting thought: Conductors are notorious for their longevity but how many can you name who have succumbed to this dreadful condition? I can’t think of any. All that physical exercise and the mental stimulation needed for making music must be doing some good!
Armchair conductors should feel the benefit too!
The best neuronal exercise – before listening to recorded music – is making music oneself.
They should systematically and state or health insurance sponsored bring in choir masters in every elderly hospice and retirement center.
Probably that would also save a lot of money that doesn’t need to be spent on pharmaceuticals.
Notorious?
Ok, famed is probably better but I’d already hit the reply button when I had second thoughts. Whatever, it’s certainly deserving of serious study.
This goes a long way to illustrate why certain religions forbid or devaluate music…
I had read this before but had forgotten about it. Thanks for the update.
Very moving. Thank you.