Abstract
Strong links between music and motor functions suggest that music could represent an interesting aid for motor learning. The present study aims for the first time to test the potential of music to assist in the learning of sequences of gestures in normal and pathological aging. Participants with mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and healthy older adults (controls) learned sequences of meaningless gestures that were either accompanied by music or a metronome. We also manipulated the learning procedure such that participants had to imitate the gestures to-be-memorized in synchrony with the experimenter or after the experimenter during encoding. Results show different patterns of performance for the two groups. Overall, musical accompaniment had no impact on the controls’ performance but improved those of AD participants. Conversely, synchronization of gestures during learning helped controls but seemed to interfere with retention in AD. We discuss these findings regarding their relevance for a better understanding of auditory–motor memory, and we propose recommendations to maximize the mnemonic effect of music for motor sequence learning for dementia care.
Highlights
Music has been shown to enhance the retention of newly acquired verbal information in normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).Simmons-Stern et al (2010) showed that after two exposures, patients with mild AD were better at recognizing sung than spoken lyrics
Though, the only significant contrast was between Metronome_NoSync and Music_NoSync in the AD group (Z = 2.11, p < 0.05), showing an advantage in the music condition compared to the metronome condition when the gestures were learned without synchrony
Music has recently been shown to act as a mnemonic aid for recognition of lyrics in patients with AD (Simmons-Stern et al, 2010, 2012) as well as moderately increasing the retention of lyrics (Moussard et al, 2012, 2014)
Summary
Music has been shown to enhance the retention of newly acquired verbal information in normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Simmons-Stern et al (2010) showed that after two exposures, patients with mild AD (mean MMSE = 24/30) were better at recognizing sung than spoken lyrics. Better retention of sung lyrics rather than spoken lyrics was found in a delayed free recall (10 min after learning) in mild AD patients and healthy controls (Moussard et al, 2014). We proposed that dual coding of lyrics and melody lead to a stronger memory trace, which enhances longterm retention. Music has been shown to facilitate performance during various kinds of cognitive (including non-linguistic) tasks (Schellenberg, 2005). Music may be viewed as having a large positive impact on cognition in general through broad effects on such aspects as attention, emotion, and motivation (arousal effect)
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