Dementia is a significant health issue facing our aging population. Although there is no known cure, there is increasing evidence that music is an effective treatment for various symptoms of dementia. Music therapy and musical activities can have widespread benefits for people with dementia and their caretakers, including triggering memories, enhancing relationships, reducing agitation, and improving mood. This book outlines the current research on music and dementia from internationally renowned music therapists, music psychologists, and clinical neuropsychologists.

For people with dementia, the world can become a lonely and isolated place. Music has long been a vital instrument in transcending cognitive issues; bringing people together, and allowing a person to live in the moment. Connecting through Music with People with Dementia explains how a caregiver can learn to use melody or rhythm to connect with someone who may be otherwise non-responsive, and how memories can be stimulated by music that resonates with a part of someone's past. This user-friendly book demonstrates how even simple sounds and movements can engage people with dementia, promoting relaxation and enjoyment. All that's needed to succeed is a love of music, and a desire to gain greater communication and more meaningful interaction with people with dementia. The book provides practical advice on using music with people with dementia, and includes a songbook suggesting a range of popular song choices and a chapter focusing on the importance of caregivers looking after themselves as well as the people they care for. Suitable for both family and professional caregivers with no former experience of music therapy, and for music therapy students and entry level professionals, this accessible book will lay bare the secrets of music therapy to all.

Music is an essential tool in dementia care. This accessible guide embraces ways in which music can enhance the daily lives of those with dementia. It draws on the expertise of practitioners regularly working in dementia settings, as well as incorporating research on people with dementia, to help anyone, whether or not they have any musical skills or experience, to successfully use music in dementia care. Guiding the reader through accessible activities with singing, percussion, sounding bowls and other musical tools, the book shows how music may can be used from the early to late stages of dementia. This creative outlet can extend to inspire dance, movement, poetry and imagery. The chapters include creative uses of technology, such as tablets and personal playlists. The book also covers general considerations for using music with people living with dementia in institutional settings, including evaluating and recording outcomes. Living Well with Dementia through Music is the perfect go-to guide for music-based activities with people living with dementia.

What goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music? What is it about music, what gives it such peculiar power over us, power delectable and beneficent for the most part, but also capable of uncontrollable and sometimes destructive force? Music has no concepts, it lacks images; it has no power of representation, it has no relation to the world. And yet it is evident in all of us–we tap our feet, we keep time, hum, sing, conduct music, mirror the melodic contours and feelings of what we hear in our movements and expressions. In this book, Oliver Sacks explores the power music wields over us–a power that sometimes we control and at other times don’t. He explores, in his inimitable fashion, how it can provide access to otherwise unreachable emotional states, how it can revivify neurological avenues that have been frozen, evoke memories of earlier, lost events or states or bring those with neurological disorders back to a time when the world was much richer. This is a book that explores, like no other, the myriad dimensions of our experience of and with music.

An international collection examining the opportunities for using music-induced states of altered consciousness. The observations of the contributors cover a wide range of music types capable of inducing altered states. It will interest practicing music therapists, musicologists, and ethnomusicologists, students and academics in the field.

Music and the Aging Brain describes brain functioning in aging and addresses the power of music to protect the brain from loss of function and how to cope with the ravages of brain diseases that accompany aging. By studying the power of music in aging through the lens of neuroscience, behavioral, and clinical science, the book explains brain organization and function. Written for those researching the brain and aging, the book provides solid examples of research fundamentals, including rigorous standards for sample selection, control groups, description of intervention activities, measures of health outcomes, statistical methods, and logically stated conclusions. - Summarizes brain structures supporting music perception and cognition - Examines and explains music as neuroprotective in normal aging - Addresses the association of hearing loss to dementia - Promotes a neurological approach for research in music as therapy - Proposes questions for future research in music and aging

Psychiatric disorders like dementia and depression are very common among older people. Written by experts in clinical practice, this handbook provides an easy to use and comprehensive account of what is known about these conditions, how clinicians can respond to given situations, and how services can be best organised.

The cultural and medical history of dementia and Alzheimer's disease by a leading psychiatrist and bioethicist who urges us to turn our focus from cure to care. Despite being a physician and a bioethicist, Tia Powell wasn't prepared to address the challenges she faced when her grandmother, and then her mother, were diagnosed with dementia--not to mention confronting the hard truth that her own odds aren't great. In the U.S., 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day; by the time a person reaches 85, their chances of having dementia approach 50 percent. And the truth is, there is no cure, and none coming soon, despite the perpetual promises by pharmaceutical companies that they are just one more expensive study away from a pill. Dr. Powell's goal is to move the conversation away from an exclusive focus on cure to a genuine appreciation of care--what we can do for those who have dementia, and how to keep life meaningful and even joyful. Reimagining Dementia is a moving combination of medicine and memoir, peeling back the untold history of dementia, from the story of Solomon Fuller, a black doctor whose research at the turn of the twentieth century anticipated important aspects of what we know about dementia today, to what has been gained and lost with the recent bonanza of funding for Alzheimer's at the expense of other forms of the disease. In demystifying dementia, Dr. Powell helps us understand it with clearer eyes, from the point of view of both physician and caregiver. Ultimately, she wants us all to know that dementia is not only about loss--it's also about the preservation of dignity and hope.

"The book is the place to turn for initial information and perspective on Alzheimer's disease, and to return for practical advice as problems arise. Most importantly, however, it dispels the sense of hopelessness families may feel by providing steps to maximize the enjoyment of life for the person with Alzheimer's disease." --- Robert C. Griggs, MD, FAAN; 2009 - 2011 President, American Academy of Neurology