Clive said she never played it and never saw it. Sacks interviewed Clive at home and noticed some Bach music sitting at the piano asking him to play it. “He always feels like he just came out of the unconscious and came out of the dead,” she said.ĭr. His wife, Deborah, explained that every moment of awakening seemed to be the first moment of awakening. He had no new memories to keep and had lost most of his past. It mainly affects the medial temporal lobes, which are responsible for the normal functioning of memory. In his famous book Musicology, published in 2007, the late Oliver Sacks discussed only a few patients with severe memory impairment. What does the literature say about the value of music in people with dementia and other categories of cognitive impairment? Let us first look at people with predominantly moderate to severe memory disorders. Event memory, knowledge, and reasoning, known as explicit memory (MS), gradually disappear as dementia worsens. The memory for these activities is called the procedural memory (MS). The person performing these activities may not know who you are or who you are, but these activities have been learned and ingrained and will remain so in your younger years. These include activities such as riding an indoor bike, music, dancing and throwing a baseball. Understanding of procedure storageĭespite the degree of brain damage and severity of dementia, in most cases certain activities are preserved and very resistant to decline. Before this, I will provide a comprehensive overview of several notable studies. Over the past 25 years, many published reports and studies have examined the relationship between music and cognitive impairment and sought to shed light on it. Do people with dementia benefit from exposure to music? If so, what are these benefits and how does it work? As a neurologist specializing in dementia, I have long wondered about the connection between music and memory and the relationship between music and knowledge. It offers a unique emotional experience that gains personal and social significance in infinite ways. We have all been exposed to music in one way or another, whether we are listening to recordings, playing an instrument, going to concerts or dancing. One of the most important forms of artistic expression is that music is embedded in culture and human identity.

Musicology oliver sacks