So we performed a study in people who had either Alzheimer’s disease type of dementia, or dementia caused by frontotemporal diseases, which we can call frontotemporal dementia. And what we wanted to know was whether there’s a different pattern of activation that you can pick up with an MRI scan in response to the favorite music that you hear. So I think many people have seen examples that if a person with dementia hears music, that they can light up...
So we performed a study in people who had either Alzheimer’s disease type of dementia, or dementia caused by frontotemporal diseases, which we can call frontotemporal dementia. And what we wanted to know was whether there’s a different pattern of activation that you can pick up with an MRI scan in response to the favorite music that you hear. So I think many people have seen examples that if a person with dementia hears music, that they can light up. And maybe it’s possible again to make a connection with the person. And what we saw was that with Alzheimer’s disease, the brain actually lights up. So it’s many different places in the brain that become activated when people heard their favorite music. But in frontotemporal dementia, we saw that there was actually not so much activation, only activation in certain regions of the brain. And that was striking because what we also noticed was in frontotemporal dementia that people can have a very strong emotional response as well to music. So to us this means that these different causes of dementia result in brain changes that respond differently to something that you love. So that means that there’s music therapy being offered in many places around the world and I think that’s a wonderful thing and possibly people may react differently to music therapy so it could be that that needs to have personalized approaches as well.
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