Individuals with Alzheimer's disease continue to feel emotions after listening to music
What is it about?
Individuals with Alzheimer's disease and healthy older adults listened to music they knew well that made them feel either happy/positive or sad/negative emotions. After listening to about 5 minutes of music, participants self-reported feeling the expected emotion (happy with happy music, sad with sad music). These emotions persisted for up to 20 minutes. However, the Alzheimer's patients demonstrated significantly impaired memory for the cause of their emotions.
Why is it important?
This study illustrates the importance of considering that emotion-inducing events impact people whether they remember what happened to them or not. This implies that the manner in which we treat and engage with individuals with Alzheimer's and related dementias (significant memory impairment) matters. It is the third study in this line of research, but the first to demonstrate this intriguing dissociation between memory and emotion using familiar music as the stimulus.