[Dixielandjazz] ScienceDaily: Study Finds Dementia May AffectMusical Tastes

[Fred Spencer]

Dear Norman,

Thank you for this report and for your control in not commenting on it. As a 
fellow physician you well know the "anecdotal" nonsense based on a few cases 
which fills the press and TV news every day, and which has no scientific 
validity whatsoever. Often all it does is to raise the hopes of unfortunate 
sufferers from a disease which "MAY" or "COULD" (watch for those words!) be 
cured in a few years!

Mind over music was used by the Greeks and Romans in classical times and its 
effect is told in the myth of Orpheus and his lyre. The most interesting 
account is in the 17th century when it controlled the Italian "Dancing 
Mania." In this psycho-epidemic the bite of the tarantula spider was wrongly 
blamed for producing an uncontrollable urge to continue dancing to the point 
of exhaustion. The only cure was music written in the form of--what else?--a 
"Tarantella." Cheers.

Fred

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Norman Vickers" <nvickers1 at cox.net>
To: "DJML" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 8:36 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] ScienceDaily: Study Finds Dementia May 
AffectMusical Tastes


> To: DJML
> From: Norman
>
> I forward this artice from Science Daily-- without comment.  Draw your own
> conclusions. Thanks to Frank Froman, manager of the national H. L. mencken
> list for this item.
>
> norman
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Premise Checker [mailto:checker at panix.com]
> Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 5:25 PM
> To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org
> Subject: ScienceDaily: Study Finds Dementia May Affect Musical Tastes
>
> Frank Forman wrote:  I had always thought that those who like pop music 
> are
> demented.
>
> Study Finds Dementia May Affect Musical Tastes
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/001226082511.htm
>
> St. Paul, MN -- Appreciating music for the first time, or switching
> preferences from classical to "pop" music, can be a behavior
> resulting from dementia, as reported in Neurology, the scientific
> journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
>
> Dementia is often characterized by a loss of reasoning abilities,
> language skills and memory. But researchers at the National Centre
> for Research and Care of Alzheimers Disease in Brescia, Italy,
> found that two of the patients who had acquired frontotemporal
> dementia, subsequently acquired something new: an appreciation for
> a kind of music they previously disliked.
>
> In one example cited in the study, a 68-year-old lawyer developed
> progressing apathy, indifference to his work, and a loss of
> inhibition, judgment, and speaking and abstract thinking skills.
> About two years after his diagnosis, he began to listen at full
> volume to a popular Italian pop music band. Formerly a classical
> music listener, he had once referred to pop music as "mere noise."
>
> In another example, a 73-year-old homemaker developed apathy and
> loss of interest in her children. About a year after her diagnosis,
> she developed an interest in music, where she had barely tolerated
> easy-listening tunes before, and began sharing her 11-year-old
> granddaughter's interest in pop music.
>
> "Our patients developed a new attitude to appreciate a kind of
> music that they used to dislike," said study author Giovanni B.
> Frisoni, MD. "Although it cannot be claimed that such behavior is
> specific to dementia, the behavior is unlikely in other types of
> dementia such as Alzheimer's disease. In fact, it never came out
> during history collection in any of the 1,500 new Azheimer's
> patients seen in our center in the last five years, while it was
> detected in two of the 46 new dementia patients seen in the same
> period."
>
> Frisoni offered some possible explanations for the change in
> musical preferences. First, the change of behavior could be tied to
> a change in one's attitude toward novelty. "To people over age 60,
> pop music is considered novel. Previous studies have suggested that
> novelty is managed by the brain's right frontal lobe, and a
> predominance of the right over the left frontal lobe might lead to
> novelty seeking," he said. Second, lesions may have damaged the
> brain's frontal and temporal lobe, involved in the perception of
> pitch, timbre, rhythm, and familiarity. Frisoni added that there is
> no accounting for musical taste, and that his study does not imply
> that pop music listeners have frontal dysfunction.
>
> Another study by neurologists at the University of California-Los
> Angeles released in 1998 reported similar findings: dementia brings
> out artistic talents in people who never had them before. In that
> study, it was observed that patients developed artistic talents,
> including music and drawing, which flourished while the dementia
> worsened.
>
>
>
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