Here at Penn, the 2013-2014
Academic Year has been dubbed “The Year of Sound,” gathering the Quaker Nation
to celebrate all things musical, harmonious, noteworthy, and rhythmically
driven. We’re all dancing (and learning) to the same tune! And as someone
interested in neuroscience – which if you’re reading this, I’m sure you probably
are as well or you're on the wrong page – Penn could not have picked a more exciting topic to delve into
for all things brainy. Sound and the brain often go hand in hand, as scientists
and researchers study effects of music on the brain, the way we process sound,
clinical music therapy, and sound and memory, among other endless
possibilities. I came across an interesting article regarding music in
Alzheimer’s therapy, and immediately was drawn to the idea of music and the
brain linking to this year’s theme, Year of Sound. So whether this gets you
excited about music, memory, or self-awareness, keep both your ears and your
brain open to this noteworthy breakthrough
in Alzheimer’s research.
As most people probably know,
Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, is a neurodegenerative
disease characterized by rapid and progressive decline of cognitive function.
So far, there has been very little effective treatment for AD, so many have
turned to interest in treating Alzheimer’s with behavioral therapy rather than
drugs. A broad array of treatments have been investigated to battle this
disease, including cognitive training, sensory stimulation, music therapy, and
motor stimulation – of which music therapy seems to gather the most interest
and results. For some reason, several different studies have shown that in
Alzheimer’s patients with moderate to severe AD, their music memory has often been preserved despite of severe impairment
in other areas. Several studies have shown that music therapy in Alzheimer’s
patients can often alleviate some symptoms and reduce dementia troubles,
overall improving healthy cognition, memory, language, and depression or
anxiety. However, several researchers in Spain recently set out to examine the
effects of music on a slightly different aspect of patients that is lost -- self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness is a
characteristic thought to be unique to humans and some apes, separating higher
thinking from that of other mammals. Basically, self-consciousness is an
awareness of self, an ability to separate ourselves from perception and realize
that we are perceiving. Descartes’ aphorism “I think, therefore I am” is the
object of self-awareness, an understanding that we can realize we are thinking, and deduce from that our own existence. SC
is multi-faceted, including consciousness of the body, its characteristics
(i.e. if we are blond, brown, big or small), perception (senses of sight,
smell, taste), one’s own autobiography, judgment, and moral decisions. Self-consciousness
is a cognitive trait that allows us to be aware of the people we are, what we
think, and act by moral reflection. So, in extreme cases, a loss of SC involves
the subject no longer being conscious of existing. (Crazy to think we can be
alive, yet not know we exist…)
Because music therapy has been
shown to improve many symptoms of Alzheimer’s, Gil et al set out to discover if
familiar music exposure could improve self-consciousness in cases of
Alzheimer’s. 40 patients were recruited from the Memory Clinic in Salamanca,
Spain to participate in the study, divided into a control group and an
experimental group. 11 familiar songs were chosen for the experimental group
and 5 unfamiliar songs were chosen for the control group. To assess levels of
self-consciousness, patients were given an SC questionnaire that asked
questions regarding personal identity, affective state, body representation,
future memory, self-analysis, and moral judgments. They were then exposed to
three months of intervention period in which they listened to music as part of
daily therapy, and then followed up with the same SC questionnaire. After
analyzing the results of the questionnaire, comparisons between the experimental
and control groups showed that there were significant differences between the
pre and post states of self-consciousness. The experimental group improved
significantly in personal identity, affective state, moral judgment, and body
representation, whereas in the control group there was impairment in almost all
aspects over the three months. The three months of familiar music exposure
integrated into daily life appeared to strengthen self-awareness and cognitive
mental perception, while the control group continued to decline in state of
consciousness.
So what does this mean? Maybe
familiar music can be considered an overall enhancer for both self-awareness
and mental state of being. Why did unfamiliar music therapy do nothing for
patients? It is thought that unfamiliar music may require more processing of
short-term memory, which is greatly affected in Alzheimer’s patients, whereas
familiar music may trigger involuntary memories by favoring events formerly
associated with the music. So it can be proposed that prolonged exposure to familiar music could allow
AD patients who have lost other social and cognitive skills to participate in life and
gain a sense of their own existence.
Being self-aware is not something
we normally think about. How often do we actually take the time to consciously
think about our own perception and existence? It’s not exactly something we
value, yet in Alzheimer’s patients an ability to recognize ourselves is sadly
lost. Who knew that our favorite songs could be the link to bringing us back into
existence?
Familiar Music as an Enhancer of Self-Consciousness in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3784147/
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