Tianqi Chen
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) has become a major worldwide health crisis with increasing prevalence among the aging population. People with early stage Alzheimer’s will continue to experience symptoms that progressively worsen as time goes on. Pharmacotherapy has shown its limited effectiveness in slowing down the development of symptoms, but non-pharma therapies such as music therapy have shown promise in assisting Alzheimer’s patients to improve their quality of life. The goal of this study is to assess the effects of two genres of music interventions on an Alzheimer’s patient’s selective cognitive measures such as relational communication, the verbal and nonverbal aspects of how messages from the patient are conveyed. This paper presents the case of a 73-year-old patient with moderate Alzheimer’s living at Memory Care Center at Fox Trail, Princeton, NJ. Music interventions were applied to slow the development of additional symptoms. His successful response to certain types of music inspired the author to continue Alzheimer’s treatment using music interventions, and as a systematic controlled treatment for this condition. The different response after the periods of treatment using different types of music genres in a five-year period (2014-2019) may suggest the modality of certain genres of music interventions on this patient. The Individualized Music Therapy Assessment Profile (IMTAP) will be used to measure the patient’s cognitive response. This study may lay the groundwork for future research on selective genres of music intervention in non-drug therapy for Alzheimer’s patients, specifically music therapy.
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