The Effect of Music Therapy on Dementia Patients

Effect of Music Therapy on Dementia
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Effect of Music Therapy on Dementia
Background Dementia is a neurological disorder, which is presented as an inability to form new memories or difficulty to retrieve old memories. Such disorder may be caused due to age-related degeneration of neurons or pathological degeneration of neurons. A form of Dementia called Alzheimer’s disease, affects individuals during the middle years. The cause of degeneration of neurons has been largely attributed to the amyloidal hypothesis. However, other factors like genetic or environmental or psychiatric causes have also been correlated with Dementia. The “amyloidal hypothesis” is based on the degeneration of neurons due to accumulated senile plaques. The cholinergic neurons of Nucleus Basalis of Meynert secrete beta-amyloidal proteins, which reacts with those neurons and causes their degeneration (Gwendolyn, 1997).
For formation and retrieval of memory, this nucleus is essential as it is the pathway to Hippocampus. The hippocampus is the seat of memory formation and plasticity changes, which helps in retrieval of memory. However, the loss of functional neurons (cholinergic neurons), leads to impaired memory. Dementia is prevalent in the older population and is associated with accidental falls and severe impairment in quality of life of an individual. Therefore, management of dementia imposes the se…