Music can be medicine. This study examines what a dose of symphony does for dementia

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The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America recently awarded the Atlanta-based researchers $200,000 to advance their research in collaboration with Arts + Health Laboratory: Georgia’s NeuroArts Coalition, a partnership involving Emory, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and Performance Hypothesis. 

The collaboration is part of a new Arts + Health Laboratory: Georgia’s NeuroArts Coalition, announced in October by the Woodruff Arts Center. It brings together academic partners, community organizations and nonprofits to investigate how the arts improve both brain and overall health, and to use science-based findings to expand access in schools, health care systems and communities statewide. 

Dr. Monica Parker leads outreach, recruitment and engagement for Emory’s Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center within the Emory Goizueta Brain Health Institute. 

There is research that shows that music improves mood, improves behavior, and allows people with cognitive impairment to maintain their ability to independently do their activities of daily living, Parker said. 

"What is missing is greater study and quantification of what kind of music, what music, what dose is appropriate," Parker said. "We invited all of our participants last year to the symphony, and they had such a great experience, we decided we would try to see how this might help persons living with dementia."

The two-year project will gather data through a program built with a musical intervention toolkit created by the National Institutes of Health.

The NeuroArts Network Initiative is designed to better understand and connect the arts, whether it's orchestral music, vocal music, performance, dance, visual arts, and connected to how these different art genres can positively affect one's overall health.