Musical Memory in Alzheimer Disease

Vanstone, Ashley D.; Cuddy, Lola L.

doi:10.1080/13825580903042676

Cited by 67 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Another study found normal to partial retention of musical abilities in 75% of adults with AD. 12 Researchers have even hypothesized that dementia may be less prevalent among orchestral musicians, and that this could be due to a lifetime engaged in a cognitively stimulating endeavor. 13 …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Musical Training and Late-Life Cognition

Gooding

Abner

Jicha

et al. 2013

Am J Alzheimers Dis Other Demen

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This study investigated effects of early- to mid-life musical training on cognition in older adults. A Musical Training Survey examined self-reported musical experience and objective knowledge in 237 cognitively intact participants. Responses were classified into Low, Medium, and High knowledge groups. Linear mixed models compared the groups’ longitudinal performance on the Animal Naming Test (ANT; semantic verbal fluency) and Logical Memory Story A Immediate Recall (LMI; episodic memory) controlling for baseline age, time since baseline, education, sex, and full-scale IQ. Results indicate that High knowledge participants had significantly higher LMI scores at baseline and over time compared to Low knowledge participants. ANT scores did not differ among the groups. Ability to read music was associated with higher mean scores for both ANT and LMI over time. Early-to mid-life musical training may be associated with improved late-life episodic and semantic memory as well as a useful marker of cognitive reserve.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Musical Training and Late-Life Cognition

Gooding

Abner

Jicha

et al. 2013

Am J Alzheimers Dis Other Demen

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“…Specifically, we tested both general and specific content memory in order to assess the utility of these functional musical mnemonics. Based on our previous finding and evidence that at least some forms of musical memory may be preferentially spared by the degenerative effects of AD (see Baird & Samson, 2009 for review; Hsieh, Hornberger, Piguet, & Hodges, 2011; Vanstone & Cuddy, 2010), we hypothesized that both general and specific content information would be better remembered for lyrics studied with a sung recording than for lyrics studied with a spoken recording.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Music-based memory enhancement in Alzheimer's Disease: Promise and limitations

et al. 2012

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In a previous study (Simmons-Stern, Budson, & Ally 2010), we found that patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) better recognized visually presented lyrics when the lyrics were also sung rather than spoken at encoding. The present study sought to further investigate the effects of music on memory in patients with AD by making the content of the song lyrics relevant for the daily life of an older adult and by examining how musical encoding alters several different aspects of episodic memory. Patients with AD and healthy older adults studied visually presented novel song lyrics related to instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) that were accompanied by either a sung or a spoken recording. Overall, participants performed better on a memory test of general lyric content for lyrics that were studied sung as compared to spoken. However, on a memory test of specific lyric content, participants performed equally well for sung and spoken lyrics. We interpret these results in terms of a dual-process model of recognition memory such that the general content questions represent a familiarity-based representation that is preferentially sensitive to enhancement via music, while the specific content questions represent a recollection-based representation unaided by musical encoding. Additionally, in a test of basic recognition memory for the audio stimuli, patients with AD demonstrated equal discrimination for sung and spoken stimuli. We propose that the perceptual distinctiveness of musical stimuli enhanced metamemorial awareness in AD patients via a non-selective distinctiveness heuristic, thereby reducing false recognition while at the same time reducing true recognition and eliminating the mnemonic benefit of music. These results are discussed in the context of potential music-based memory enhancement interventions for the care of patients with AD.

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“…Musical memory also appears to represent a special case in Alzheimer's disease, in that it is often surprisingly well preserved (Vanstone and Cuddy, 2010), especially implicit musical memory, which may be spared until very late stages of the disease. Because these findings are mainly derived from case studies, it is not clear under what circumstances which aspect of musical memory is preserved (Baird and Samson, 2009;Johnson et al, 2011).…”

Section: Musical Memory Is Specific and Task-dependentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why musical memory can be preserved in advanced Alzheimer’s disease

Jacobsen

Stelzer

Fritz

et al. 2015

Brain

255

183

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) for a scientific commentary on this article.Musical memory is considered to be partly independent from other memory systems. In Alzheimer's disease and different types of dementia, musical memory is surprisingly robust, and likewise for brain lesions affecting other kinds of memory. However, the mechanisms and neural substrates of musical memory remain poorly understood. In a group of 32 normal young human subjects (16 male and 16 female, mean age of 28.0 AE 2.2 years), we performed a 7 T functional magnetic resonance imaging study of brain responses to music excerpts that were unknown, recently known (heard an hour before scanning), and long-known. We used multivariate pattern classification to identify brain regions that encode long-term musical memory. The results showed a crucial role for the caudal anterior cingulate and the ventral pre-supplementary motor area in the neural encoding of long-known as compared with recently known and unknown music. In the second part of the study, we analysed data of three essential Alzheimer's disease biomarkers in a region of interest derived from our musical memory findings (caudal anterior cingulate cortex and ventral pre-supplementary motor area) in 20 patients with Alzheimer's disease (10 male and 10 female, mean age of 68.9 AE 9.0 years) and 34 healthy control subjects (14 male and 20 female, mean age of 68.1 AE 7.2 years). Interestingly, the regions identified to encode musical memory corresponded to areas that showed substantially minimal cortical atrophy (as measured with magnetic resonance imaging), and minimal disruption of glucose-metabolism (as measured with 18 F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography), as compared to the rest of the brain. However, amyloid-b deposition (as measured with 18 F-flobetapir positron emission tomography) within the currently observed regions of interest was not substantially less than in the rest of the brain, which suggests that the regions of interest were still in a very early stage of the expected course of biomarker development in these regions (amyloid accumulation ! hypometabolism ! cortical atrophy) and therefore relatively well preserved. Given the observed overlap of musical memory regions with areas that are relatively spared in Alzheimer's disease, the current findings may thus explain the surprising preservation of musical memory in this neurodegenerative disease.

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Musical Memory in Alzheimer Disease

Cited by 67 publications

References 43 publications

Musical Training and Late-Life Cognition

Musical Training and Late-Life Cognition

Music-based memory enhancement in Alzheimer's Disease: Promise and limitations

Why musical memory can be preserved in advanced Alzheimer’s disease

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