Music may help improve our memory. Increasingly, music is accompanying traditional medical therapies to help people heal faster.
Experts say music has the power both to calm and to energize.
The British researchers asked 23 people with mild dementia to remember details about their lives with different sounds playing in the background. Background noise helped the participants, aged 68 to 90, recall more detail than complete quiet, but music was the most helpful sound in assisting memory, the study found. People with mild dementia have easily recognizable memory problems but still can recall quite a bit, says co-researcher Nicholas Foster, also a London psychologist. They also may have other emotional problems, he says. Participants were asked about three different stages of their lives, from birth to age 20 years, from age 20 to age 50 and from age 50 to the present.