Sensogenomics of music and Alzheimer’s disease: An interdisciplinary view from neuroscience, transcriptomics, and epigenomics

Abstract

IntroductionThe relationship between music and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been approached by different disciplines, but most of our outstanding comes from neuroscience.MethodsFirst, we systematically reviewed the state-of-the-art of neuroscience and cognitive sciences research on music and AD (>100 studies), and the progress made on the therapeutic impact of music stimuli in memory. Next, we meta-analyzed transcriptomic and epigenomic data of AD patients to search for commonalities with genes and pathways previously connected to music in genome association, epigenetic, and gene expression studies.ResultsOur findings indicate that >93% of the neuroscience/ cognitive sciences studies indicate at least one beneficial effect of music on patients with neurodegenerative diseases, being improvements on memory and cognition the most frequent outcomes; other common benefits were on social behavior, mood and emotion, anxiety and agitation, quality of life, and depression. Out of the 334 music-related genes, 127 (38%) were found to be linked to epigenome/transcriptome analysis in AD (vs. healthy controls); some of them (SNCA, SLC6A4, ASCC2, FTH1, PLAUR and ARHGAP26) have been reported to be associated e.g. with musical aptitude and music effect on the transcriptome. Other music-related genes (GMPR, SELENBP1 and ADIPOR1) associated to neuropsychiatric, neurodegenerative diseases and music performance, emerged as hub genes in consensus co-expression modules detected between AD and music estimulated transcriptomes. In addition, we found connections between music, AD and dopamine related genes, with SCNA being the most remarkable – a gene previously associated with learning and memory, and neurodegenerative disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s disease and AD).DiscussionThe present study indicate that the vast majority of neuroscientific studies unambiguously show that music has a beneficial effect on health, being the most common benefits relevant to Alzheimer’s disease. These findings illuminate a new roadmap for genetic research in neurosciences, and musical interventions in AD and other neurodegenerative conditions.

Tuning gene expression to music: the compensatory effect of music on age-related cognitive disorders

“…Notably, neurologists have posited that music affects almost all regions of the brain [22]; in parallel, our study indicated a high impact of music on our transcriptomes. It would be of particular interest to explore the extent to which this effect underlies the widely held belief that music can help manage AD and other medical conditions [1].…”

“…Additionally, expanding the study to include other disorders i.e., mental-related disorders, TEA, brain damage, etc, would provide a broader understanding of the effects of music on gene expression. Further research is necessary to fully comprehend the implications of these findings for human health [1].…”

“…After an initial quality control of each dataset separately, and the removal of outliers, the whole multi-cohort dataset was composed of gene expression data from 307 MCI patients (mean age=75.1 [SD=7.2]), 480 AD patients (mean age=75.1 [SD=7.1]) and 482 age-matched healthy controls (mean age=73.8 [SD=6.3]) ( Figure 1 ). Processing and merging of the data as well as the case-control DE analysis between AD and controls was carried out as explained elsewhere [1]. STRING database [11] was used to build the Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) network of the shared DEGs obtained from AD vs. controls (multi-cohort study), and from TP2 vs. TP1 in ACD patients (Pretest/Posttest study).…”

“…Additionally, expanding the study to include other disorders i.e., mental-related disorders, TEA, brain damage, etc, would provide a broader understanding of the effects of music on gene expression. Further research is necessary to fully comprehend the implications of these findings for human health [1]. (when compared against healthy controls) and the DEGs and DEPs detected in AD (when compared against healthy controls) that are also significant in ACD after the musical stimuli (see Table S4, Figure 4 and Figure 5 for details).…”

“…Two further studies [7, 8] identified microRNAs that were up- and down-regulated of both listeners and professional musicians, building upon previous findings [3, 6]. Navarro et al [1] used publicly available transcriptomic data from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients cross-compared to music-related genes and found a notable commonality of these genes with those altered in AD patients. None of all these studies analyzed the direct impact of music in age-related cognitive disease (ACD) patients.…”