Mozart is no aid in mild Alzheimers
NewsA Spanish study finds that listening to ‘classical music’ does no appreciable good with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, it appears they only played them Mozart.
From the summary:
Given the lack of effective treatments to counteract cognitive impairment, background music has traditionally been proposed as a possible therapeutic alternative for improving memory-related tasks. Its effect has long been the focus of debate, but this relationship has now been found to be possibly determined by new interindividual parameters, which means that it may be more complex than was previously thought.
This is shown by research led by Marco Calabria, a researcher in the Cognitive Neurolab group of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), who is now considering new experiments.
The initial results of the Mozart effect and memory in patients with cognitive impairment (MEM-COG) study, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, suggest that listening to background classical music while performing memory tasks neither improves nor impairs learning levels among people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
More here.
Enjoying music has got not much to do with your cognitive abilities.
It’s all about guttural feelings and emotional intelligence.
Music cannot cure functional disorders, it can only distract from them.
Music therapy has been clinically shown to be effective in treatments for a wide range of disorders. To name but two examples, melodic intonation therapy has helped countless people regain speech after stroke or traumatic brain injury. Rhythmic entrainment with music is regularly used to radically improve motor coordination for people with Parkinson’s.
For those who don’t know anything about classical music, Mozart is often the only reference. Despite his proven efficacy in other groups, maybe this group might respond better to another composer. After all, Wolfie is not always everyone’s cup of tea.
That’s for sure. I grew bored with Wolfie decades ago.
I have had several friends afflicted with this horrible diesease. One who died last year had been a ballet dancer. It was only after some years when her daughter discovered some dancing classes for those suffering from incurable diseases that her mother became at last enthusiastic and seemed to be recapturing some interest in life again. I wonder what might have happened in that Study had other composers been tried.
Try instead with Schoenberg.
This one in particular. (OK, not all Schoenberg!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0SCdwGBQJ4
Nice piece, but the original is not by Schoenberg. My point is: why do so many people think of classical music as “relaxing” and why only “happy music” for “medical use”? Maybe mild Alzheimer patients would benefit of intellectually demanding music, like Bach’s Kunst det Fuge or Webern’s String Quartet op 28. Brain food.
Mild cognitive impairment is not the same as Alzheimer’s disease.
‘The Mozart effect’ is a general term for the unproven theory that listening to classical music increases intelligence. In this study they chose classical music because ” it is a type of music that falls between relaxing and arousing”, which suggests that these scientists don’t listen to much classical music.
However, there does seem to be some evidence that playing calm classical music to cows increases the milk yield.