Oliver Sacks, a doctor and neurologist who has written many books regarding the different effects of brain injury, asks whether people who are living with dementia lose their sense of self as a result of memory loss which can progress to a loss of judgement, planning and self-awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He suggests that \u2018..aspects of one\u2019s essential character, of personality and personhood, of self, survive, along with certain, almost indestructible forms of memory-even in very advanced dementia. It is as if identity has such a robust, widespread neural basis, as if personal style is so deeply ingrained in the nervous system, that it is never wholly lost\u2026\u2019 p. 336<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And most importantly for our purposes here,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018In particular, the response to music is preserved, even when the dementia is very advanced\u2026The aim of music therapy in people with dementia…seeks to address the emotions, cognitive powers, thoughts and memories, the surviving \u2018self\u2019 of the patient, to stimulate these and bring them to the fore. It aims to enrich and enlarge existence, to give freedom, stability, organisation and focus.\u2019 P336-337<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018\u2026music therapy with such patients is possible because musical perception, musical sensibility, musical emotion, and musical memory can survive long after other forms of memory have disappeared. Music of the right kind can serve to orient and anchor a patient when almost nothing else can.\u2019 P337<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He gives examples of a patient who could continue to play the piano to a high standard despite living with Alzheimer\u2019s disease- the type of memory that such a skill requires seems to stay intact for a long time. He also describes how many parts of a person\u2019s character could remain intact e.g. kindness, politeness, as if these behaviours too were long established and less likely to be lost.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Sacks talks about the significance of singing for people who are living with dementia, how the realisation that people are still able to sing fluently, despite perhaps loss of other language skills feel reassuringly positive. A sense of \u2018I can do that!\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Singing \u2018..can stimulate his feelings, his imagination, his sense of humour and creativity, and his sense of identity as nothing else can. It can enliven him, calm him, focus and engage him. It can give him back himself, and not least it can charm others, arouse their amazement and admiration-reactions more and more necessary to someone who, in his lucid moments, is painfully aware of his tragic disease and sometimes says that he feels \u2018broken inside\u2019.\u2019 P342<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sacks describes the effects of positively engaging with music in this way \u2018The mood engendered by singing can last a while, sometimes even outlasting the memory that he has sung, which may be lost within a couple of minutes.\u2019 P343<\/p>\n\n\n