Music playlist that rekindle memories of childhood can activate parts of the brain not affected by the disease in dementia patients, this is what experts say.
The patients can personalize the playlists. Of course the playlists would be of the period of their life before they develop dementia.
However, this study have the aim for non-pharmaceutical approaches to dementia, given the lack of drugs for treating it. So the experts encourage families to speak to their relatives to find out which pieces of music trigger happy memories for them.
This project was founded in 2013 and its name is “Playlist for Life”. Established by Scottish broadcaster Sally Magnusson. Her mother developed dementia. Magnusson found that playing familiar music sparked memories and brought joy. When she understood this, she decided to share the technique with others. Her mother lost the ability to use words, but when Sally sung the soundtrack of her life, her mother was still able to sing the song. The explanation is that fragments of memories were connected to those personally meaningful songs. That’s amazing. If you want to know more about this here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4-YmeL19LU
However, today there are “Playlist for Life” volunteers, they aren’t certified music therapists, but this technique it works very well.
So, the question is: how to create a playlist? There are three steps:
- Check the top songs when the person was between ages of 10 and 30;
- Add the tracks by best friends of former girlfriends or boyfriends;
- “Identify” the tracks that connect with heritage, nationality and ethnicity.
The “Playlist for Life” technique could be more effective than many drugs that have also side effects, so should be evaluated and implemented. This music therapy can counteract the feeling that dementia destroys personality and erases what makes an individual unique, even in late stages.
There is a connection between music and life, this also happened to Leonard Cohen. Read why in this article: https://musiclover.altervista.org/leonard-cohens-love-letters-at-auction/
