Music Therapy and Dementia

Dementia, characterized by terrible damage of the person's intellectual capacity, emotional perturbation and personality changes, is caused by a figure of different grounds such as as the loss of nerve cells in the encephalon owed to head injury, metabolic disorders, or even owed to a tumour in the brain.

The human encephalon have 2 hemispheres -- the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. A big subdivision of the person's encephalon is usually damaged in a patient agony from dementia. While the linguistic communication accomplishments of a individual are exclusively controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, music is perceived by many different parts of the encephalon rather than just one peculiar portion of the encephalon since the different elements of music such as as rhythm, pitch, and tune are all processed differently by distinct parts of the human brain. Therefore, it is capable of reaching the remaining healthy subdivisions of the patient's brain.

Music is received and processed by different encephalon root cells and therefore, even severely demented people can react to music. Music can be perceived and hence, used as a agency of communicating for people suffering from dementia, whose accomplishments of comprehending or learning linguistic communications is severely impaired. When all other manners of communicating neglect to do any impact, music, with its non-verbal stimulating qualities, be givens to perforate the patient's head and do possible some amount of social, emotional or cognitive connection. Symptoms such as as agitation and confusion among those people suffering from dementedness can also be soothed out by the restful and soothing personal personal effects of music.

The grade of familiarity, the grade of liking of the patient for that peculiar music and the memories associated with the music or the significance that the music throws for the individual are certain factors which define the extent of positive impact or good effects of the music therapy. While a familiar music can elicit positive responses such as as tapping of fingers and feet to the tune, humming, rhythmical motion of organic structure variety meat with the music, or a alteration of look on the face, unfamiliar music neglects to register itself in the encephalon in the first place. Therefore, we cannot happen positive personal effects in the patient when unfamiliar music is played during the music therapy sessions. Similarly, familiar scene can assist the patient associate more than than to the place, and do him experience more reassured and comforted.

The music healer must be very careful about the pitch and the volume of the music used for therapy because even these factors have got a great impact on the patient. While a high pitch and high volume can do anxiousness and pressure level to construct up, a low pitch do them experience more than relaxed.