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From:  "Cynthia Donnell" <csdonnell@m...>
"Cynthia Donnell" <csdonnell@m...>
Date:  Sat Jan 13, 2001  12:30 am
Subject:  Off: Dementia&musical tastes



News
I thought this might be of interest to some.
Cindy Donnell
________________________________________
Dementia may change musical tastes

January 04, 2001

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Dementia--an illness that causes the loss of
memory and reasoning--may in some cases bring with it gains, such as a new
appreciation of pop music, Italian researchers suggest.

In the journal Neurology, investigators report two cases where patients with
frontotemporal dementia suddenly began to enjoy pop music.

In the first case, a 68-year-old lawyer developed frontotemporal
dementia--losing abstract thinking, judgment and language skills--but 2
years after his diagnosis, he also developed an obsession for Italian pop
music, although he had previously called it "mere noise" and preferred
classical music.

Once he developed the new liking, he listened to the pop songs at full
volume and hunted for pop tapes until he died 4 years later, according to
the researchers at the National Center for Research and Care of Alzheimer's
Disease in Brescia, Italy.

Likewise, a 73-year-old homemaker with dementia lost interest in her
children and household chores; she developed impaired abstract thinking,
judgment and reasoning, but also developed a new love for pop music--despite
never having enjoyed music before.

Suddenly, she shared her 11-year-old granddaughter's musical interests,
saying pop artists had "beautiful voices and played good music with nice
rhythms."

The research suggests that changes in the brain can alter preferences and
that dementia may bring certain artistic gains, although the neural basis
for musical taste remains largely unexplored.

"I believe that a strong clinical message lies behind these apparently
quirky observations," lead author Dr. Giovanni B. Frisoni told Reuters
Health. "That dementia is characterized not only by loss of functions--as
often lay people as well as physicians believe--but also by functional
gains. Under this perspective, the demented person is in a more
complex--rather than a progressively simpler--emotional and cognitive
world."

He added, "It is possible that functional gains are more frequent than
believed, but physicians fail to detect them simply because they do not look
for them."

Frisoni noted that the researchers have not found this behavior change in
any of the 1,500 patients seen in the Italian Alzheimer center in the last 5
years, but have detected it in 2 of the 46 frontotemporal dementia patients
during that same time.

"The frontal and temporal lobes (of the brain) seem variously involved in
the perception of pitch, timbre, rhythm, and familiarity," Frisoni
suggested. "In our patients, the lesions...may have damaged some specific
circuit relevant for the integration and appreciation of musical material."

It may be that pop music, written to appeal to the widest possible audience,
may simply find new appeal when some circuits become damaged, the study
authors propose, although they emphasize that liking pop music does not mean
someone has brain dysfunction.

"However, there is no accounting for musical taste in normal persons, and
our study obviously does not imply that pop music listeners have frontal
dysfunction," Frisoni told Reuters Health. "Musical taste (ultimately)
relies on extremely complex individual, social, and cultural factors."





  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
8300 Re: Off: Dementia&musical tastes Greypins@a...   Sat  1/13/2001   1 KB
8328 Re: Off: Dementia&musical tastes Peter Louis van Dijk   Sat  1/13/2001   2 KB
8338 Re: Off: Dementia&musical tastes John Messmer, M.D.   Sun  1/14/2001   2 KB
8342 Minimalism as a musical style Lloyd W. Hanson   Sun  1/14/2001   3 KB
8354 Re: Off: Dementia&musical tastes Reg Boyle   Mon  1/15/2001   2 KB
8346 Re: Off: Dementia&musical tastes Gina   Sun  1/14/2001   2 KB

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