MUSIC AND ALZHEIMER: EDUCATION TO RESILIENCE

The research shown below proposes the theoretical validation of possible educational interventions on Alzheimer’s patients using music to hinder the disease’s course. The goal is to interconnect all the various ramifications in a complex mainstream departing from the recent acquisitions in several areas of investigation.

The therapeutic principle in Alzheimer’s containment is stimulating, educating and strengthening resilient skills. A recent study: “Why musical memory can be preserved in advanced Alzheimer’s disease” Jacobsen et al. (Brain, 138, 8, august 2015) has shown how the brain regions responsible for the preservation of musical memory are those who resist quite untouched during the progression of Alzheimer stages’. All of this can only encourage the use of music as arousal for the elicitation of memories capable of generating autobiographical servo-structures aimed at the containment of mnemonic degeneration. These goals of enhancing, educating the patient on resilience to Alzheimer’s disease extend also to those concerning the sustain and the empowerment of his family system which is harshly tested by the disease’s path. Benenzon (2001) emphasizes the importance of the work that the music-therapist must lead by interacting with the Alzheimer’s family as it becomes the holding structure surrounding the patient.

The results of recent studies made by the CNR group in Rome (D’Amelio, 2017) represent another scientific support concerning the Alzheimer activation processes. From an accurate morphologic analysis of the brain, the researchers found out that when the neurons in ventral tegmental area, responsible of the production of dopamine fail, the deficiency of this neurotransmitter causes the hippocampus malfunction even when its cells remain intact. This would induce kind of a tilt that correlates with a memory loss.

Dopamine is naturally released through sexuality, a particularly tasty diet and a chill-inducing music listening experience. The results obtained from Salimpoor’s neuroscientic research (Nature Neuroscience, 2011) follow this direction. They clearly demonstrate how an intense pleasure in music listening can cause a release of dopamine in the Striatum system.

It’s clear, at this point, that educating the patient affected by Alzheimer’s disease on the ability to host music in its all regenerative potential can become one more tile to build that supporting and resilience network necessary for the holding of a disease that can’t be treated yet.