The Effect Of Therapeutic Song Singing On The Long-term Memory And Emotional State Of Patients With Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

Objective:The purpose of this study is to investigate music therapy's effects on long-term memory and emotional state of patients with moderate Alzheimer's disease through the intervention of therapeutic song singing in the treatment of patients with moderate Alzheimer's disease.Methods:this study adopted the method of quantitative analysis for intra-group comparison.Overall,a total of 15 subjects completed all the studies,including 11 females and 4 males,with an average age of 80.75±7.01 years.Long-term memory scores designed by the researchers were used as core data records to evaluate the changes in long-term memory of the subjects.Before the intervention,each participant's family member was interviewed for 30 minutes to collect important positive life experiences forgotten by the participants,these events were referred to as "preset events".The songs used for the intervention were selected and sorted based on the chronological order of those "preset events".All subjects received music treatment intervention twice a week for five weeks for a total of ten intervention sessions,the duration of each session is about 30 minutes.Each intervention consisted of three parts:listening to the song,singing and discussion.The researcher recorded the "preset event","preset event" and "non-preset event" that the subject thought of actively,passively and actively during the discussion.In addition,the depression scale(phq-9)and the generalized anxiety scale(GAD-7)were used before the intervention,and after the completion of all the sessions,to evaluate the emotional state of the subjects.The concise mental symptom examination(MMSE)and neuropsychiatric questionnaire(NPI)were also used as the reference scales for pre-and post-test measure to understand the changes in the subjects' overall cognitive function and mental behavioral symptoms.Results:Through calculating the "long-term memory score table" of all the participants in each intervention scoring average,we can conclude that as the treatment progresses,participants were able to recall past experiences,the increased events recall scores demonstrates the sustaining growth trend,starting from the fourth intervention,and gradually achieve statistical significant difference(P<0.001).In addition,evidence shows that depression and anxiety of the subjects in this study were alleviated to a certain extent,and phq-9(P<0.01)and GAD-7(P<0.05)scores differs significantly.The total score of MMSE scale was improved to a certain extent,but did not reach the level of statistical significance,only the two items of location orientation(P<0.01)and immediate memory(P<0.05)reached differential statistical significance.The pre-test and posttest difference of NPI total score(P<0.05)(P<0.05),hallucination and delusion(P<0.05)and depression(P<0.05),anxiety(P<0.05),indifference(P<0.05),irritability(P<0.01)were all statistically significant;while other component score,in addition to food items,are improved to a certain extent,but failed to reach the statistically significant level.Discussion:The result shows that the way of therapeutic singing in music treatment has the possibility of improving the long-term memory and emotional state of patients with moderate Alzheimer's disease,and may also have some positive effects on the overall cognitive function and mental behavioral symptoms of patients.Music therapy has great potential as one of the non-drug interventions for Alzheimer's patients.