Alive Inside

This is an excerpt from a recently released documentary, "Alive Inside." This film beautiful captures the awakening of Alzheimer's patients through music. The neuroscience of music and the therapeutic aspects of sound are incredible human experiences. Music can break through the walls of disease and disability to reach people who have been considered unreachable. Familiar music triggers autobiographical memories in Alzheimer's patients and enhances their identity. When we listen to music, we form an emotional connection to it. The strength of our emotional connection determines how well we remember a specific song. Emotions, music, and memories are linked together in the music-memory and music-emotion hub of the brain. (Also known as the medial prefrontal cortex for all you technical people) This area of the brain is one of the last regions to deteriorate over the course of Alzheimer's disease. This explains why patients who suffer from rapidly increasing memory loss, can still recall familiar songs from their distant past. In other words, familiar music actually triggers a mental movie of memories and plays them over in your mind's eye. Music can mentally transport people to a different time and place and improve their quality of life.