Musical emotional processing in patients with Alzheimer?s Dementia

DETLEFSEN VERONICA; MOLTRASIO JULIETA; MORA MILENA; RUBINSTEIN WANDA

La Plata

Conferencia; The 15th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC15); 2017

Centre for Systematic Musicology

Music produces intense emotional reactions, similar other stimuli. The ability to process musical stimuli requires a group of processing components, and involves different brain regions. Patients with Alzheimer´s Disease (AD) present episodic memory deterioration and deficits in the emotional processing of visual stimuli. However, music emotional judgment is preserved. The aim of this study is to carry out a bibliographic review of preserved and impaired musical abilities in patients with AD. Studies showed that patients with AD show impaired performance in some aspects of musical processing, such as global. In spite of that, the emotional processing of melodies is preserved. The emotional processing component would be preserved in AD. And the areas activated are similar to healthy subjects, such as the cingulate gyrus, the cerebellum, and frontal areas. Music seems to aim to processes and areas that are preserved in AD. The study shows the importance of studying emotions in music, focusing on what is preserved in AD. This could be the key to explain the relative conservation of musical memory in this pathology, and to develop music-based treatments.