Documentary Explores Music’s Effect on Alzheimer’s Patients – Video
Music can be a powerful influence. Just think about how hard it is to get a catchy tune out of your mind. But researchers say music can also be used to unlock memories, especially for Alzheimer’s patients. Alzheimer’s experts are using the power of music to bring back memories that some thought were lost forever.
Music can transport you to a different time and place. Many Alzheimer’s and dementia patients at Silverado Senior Living in Azusa can’t remember their loved ones or what they did this morning, but in a music class they experienced a breakthrough.
Collaborating scientists from 
There is a certain degree of helplessness that a person can feel when reading about dementia. After all, there is no cure. There is no precise understanding of the cause. There is not even a way to delay the disease. From time to time, there are fun articles that do assuage our fears about dementia, like “Alcohol Intake in the Elderly Affects Risk of Cognitive Decline and Dementia” that allow us to think, Oh, drinking wine helps stave off dementia! But even those are to be taken with a grain of salt.
If there was a way to know if you were predisposed to developing Alzheimer’s disease, would you want to know? As tests to evaluate an individual’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease advance, this is a question plaguing the minds of more and more Americans, especially those who have parents or other relatives with the disease.
Researchers are reporting that Gammagard, made by Baxter International Inc., might help stabilize Alzheimer’s disease for as much as three years. The findings from the small study were presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. The evidence is weak and in only four patients, making the study was far too small to prove the treatment works, but it does provide hope that an effective treatment may be found.