MIND
Music Interventions for Neurocognitive Disorders
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Music Enrichment and Cognitive Stimulation
The Musical Museum is a dementia-informed life-enrichment program featuring musical performances intertwined with commentary and discussion around sound, music and poetry. The program takes care to acknowledge intellectual and social needs of this stage of life.
Research and Trials
Clinically Designed Improvisatory Music. Designed during the COVID-19 pandemic, this receptive intervention possesses two key attributes: for one, it uses strict parameters for rhythm, tempo, range, dynamics, timbre and silence, and second, it is live and implemented by a clinically trained musician. Social presence and engagement contribute to decreased anxiety, agitation and feelings of loneliness. See our article published in Frontiers in Neurology for more details.
Improvisatory Music for
Alzheimer's disease and Caregivers
Musical Bridges to Memory (MBM) is a program consisting of music played by a chamber ensemble together with caregiver training to enhance social engagement and reduce psychiatric symptoms in patients with dementia. Our pilot results show significant change in the relationship between the person with dementia and their care partners as well as reduced negative psychiatric symptoms. See our abstract presented at the Alzheimer’s Association conference in 2020.
NMMP partners with the Sounds Good Choir to research therapeutic group singing for older adults, including those with dementia. The collaboration, which started investigating the effect of choirs and virtual sing-alongs during the pandemic, found that regular musical participation significantly boosted participants' emotional well-being, social connection, and intellectual engagement. The research highlighted music's profound ability to provide normalcy and promote brain health, confirming the benefits of accessible, community-based music programs for an aging population.
Music Employed Treatment for Frontotemporal Dementia (MET-FTD) is an intervention to improve empathy in individuals with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). This program was created by Jeff Wolfe, neurologic music therapist from Institute for Therapy through the Arts in collaboration with Dr. Borna Bonakdarpour (Northwestern University) and Kaitlin Seibert (Cleveland Clinic).
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