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7/23/2014

Music brings you "Alive Inside"

I have written much on this site about the power of music to unlock the memories of those with dementia, about my own experiences using live music with Alzheimer's patients and how music can improve the quality of life for the elderly (and their caregivers!). Refer to the iPod Project and Music and Memory posts on this site. Now, the long-awaited release of the documentary film about this exciting subject is happening across the country. I hope you have the opportunity to see the film in theaters, but if not, it will be available in October on DVD.

If you are a caregiver for someone who might benefit from the inclusion of personalized music, please visit the website www.musicandmemory.org for information about setting up an iPod or other MP3 player with music for your care recipient. You could make an incredible difference in their life and your own with this simple action. Take a look at the video trailer below and consider how good it would feel to bring one you love "alive inside" again with music!

Dr. Bill Thomas, creator of the Eden Alternative and ChangingAging.org website, blogs about his part in the Alive Inside documentary. You'll find his article in the DailyBeast Op-Ed: Treat Dementia With Music, Not Drugs is excellent.

Here is the trailer for the Alive Inside documentary (winner of the Audience Award at 2014 Sundance Festival): or visit the website for times and dates of showings at www.aliveinside.us

12/26/2012

Being Alive Inside: Music & Memory

"If music is such an important aspect of people's lives from the time they are born, why is it that it doesn't really occur to us, as a society, to provide people with music when they can no longer do what is necessary to provide it for themselves?
Music has power, and we need to remember to keep everyone plugged in!"
~Petr Janata, PhD
Neuroscientist Guggenheim Fellow, UC Davis, Center for Mind and Brain
Imagine:  You are lost in a world where words no longer make sense, when you only dimly know the faces around you, if at all (including beloved family members), and indeed where you may not remember your own past at all.  Your entire world has shrunk down to a dim, lonely place behind a dark curtain of dementia or depression.  Then, someone approaches you with a smile and friendly manner and places headphones on your ears and begins playing a song that you danced to with your sweetheart at your wedding.  The music immediately connects you to that pleasant past memory, to who you were at that time, forming an acoustic bridge that can span what words or touch may no longer be able to do.  Your eyes brighten, your toes tap, your lips curve in a smile and the words to the song come out of your mouth, which had forgotten how to speak.  The light in your soul begins to peek out from behind the dark curtain.  You may even kick aside your walker and do a little dance. 

Is this fiction or fact?  Well, in a 2008 project which provided 200 ipods to residents in four nursing homes in New York, it is fact.  And Dan Cohen, then man behind the project and founder of Music and Memory, is seeking to make it fact for millions more!  Mr. Cohen has pioneered the program Music and Memory with the goal of making personalized music the standard of care at all 16,000 nursing home facilities around the country.  If the viral Youtube clip of Henry, a 94-year-old nursing home patient who is transformed in an astonishing "awakening" to the music on the provided ipod, is any indication, this is an idea whose time has most definitely come! 

Mr. Cohen is using the power of the media to bring this transformative technology to all the elder care advocates, nursing homes, family caregivers, and others who can use it to transform sadness and isolation to toe-tapping joy and song with the implementation of a personalized playlist for people with dementia.  Cohen and his team are at work on a documentary (Alive Inside -
www.aliveinsidemovie.com)  which features Henry and many others whose lives have been returned to them in part, by this power of their musical past and its impact on the brain.  Music and Memory and the Alive Inside documentary have been featured on numerous media, such as NPR, New York Times, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and The Doctors, and have completed a successful campaign on crowdsource funding site Kickstarter. 

Speaking as a daughter, a singer, and a caregiver, this is the most wonderful use possible of the gift of music to help our loved ones reconnect to their past, to bring them joy in the present, to make their lives so much richer and happier -- and all for the price of an ipod and some tunes and a caring person to put them together.  The Music and Memory website has a wealth of resource material to allow you to get involved at whatever level you choose -- from how to set up a playlist for a loved one with Alzheimer's at home, to running a donation drive for gently used iPods which they will refurbish for use in nursing homes.  Donate in whatever way feels right to you -- as a volunteer, by giving an old iPod to the cause, with financial support, and by spreading the word (and the music) on your social media such as facebook and twitter.  This is a chance to positively affect literally millions of lives.  Don't miss out!  
 

5/2/2012

Computers & Exercise

I just read an interesting article about a research study done by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, which is featured on the research page of this blog.  The study concludes that computer use in combination with exercise had a significant and positive result in helping preserve the memory of participants, aged 70 - 93.  Though I don't fall into that age group yet, I was encouraged that I've at least got half of that right -- betcha can't guess which half.
It was interesting to me in that I have never seen those particular two aspects studied together.  Brain stimulation has long been touted as helping neuroplasticity (which is pretty much what you'd imagine -- keeping your neural pathways working keeps them more flexible).  But it's gratifying to baby boomers everywhere who spend lots of time at a computer keyboard, that this can also be helping to keep your brain active and your memory intact.  Now we just have to remember to get up from the computer, stretch, breathe deeply and take a brisk walk every couple of hours.  At least it's hopeful news.  I'm inspired and I hope you are, too!  I really love it when something I enjoy actually turns out to be good for me, don't you?  Like dark chocolate as an antioxidant.  Ahh, yes.  But that probably deserves a post unto itself.
 
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    About Karen

    Karen is a compassionate, enthusiastic student of life, who cared for her mother for 17 years. She brings her insights, compassion, experience and desire to share knowledge and healing to this ongoing conversation with others on the caregiving path. If you are caring for a parent, spouse, friend or other loved one this site offers sanity-saving tips, open-hearted self-care ideas, and an open forum for discussion, connection and sharing resources for the journey.

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