🎵 How Tailored Music Therapy Is Boosting Dementia Care in 2025
 

In recent years, the power of music in healthcare has evolved from being merely anecdotal to becoming well-supported by evidence. This transformation is particularly evident in dementia care as we move into 2025.

But before we get to how music is helping, let’s linger on an increasing cause for concern: why has dementia become so common? Could it be our food — the proliferation of ultra-processed diets? Is it the plastics we consume, the pesticides sprayed over our crops, the stresses of modern life? A complex interplay of environmental and lifestyle factors is suspected by many. It’s a topic that’s really worth delving into — and one I hope to return to in a future issue. For now, let’s divert ourselves with  something positive and strong: how music is helping people to live better with dementia

🧠 The Science Behind the Sound

Personalised music therapy works by stimulating areas of the brain that continue to function relatively well during the later stages of dementia. A 2024 study published in *Frontiers in Neurology* found that personalised playlists improved the connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex, a region associated with memory and the sense of self. This means that music serves not only as entertainment but also as a means to help individuals reconnect with their identities.

Neuroscientists have discovered that music, particularly its rhythm and melody, engages various networks in the brain, suggesting that music may be, and I believe it truly is, a key to understanding the human brain—perhaps the most powerful key we have. The results are telling: when comparing generic music to personalised music, there are fewer behavioural issues, more moments of recognition, and a greater expression of emotions.

👂 Listening With Care: The Role of Family and Caregivers

What's most exciting about this therapy is that it is  participatory. These playlists are constructed by caregivers and families; songs from childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, replete with musical memory, are plucked from the airwaves along the way. The very activity of sitting together to listen becomes therapeutic, forging connections between then and now. As a person in music for decades, it struck a deep resonant chord. Music is a scrapbook of our lives, written in our subconscious. No wonder, then, that it can lead us back to moments we had thought lost forever.

🎶 A Tool for the Future

Even as dementia rates keep rising worldwide, particularly as life expectancy grows, the incorporation of personalised music therapy into care models is a bright spot. Technology and artificial intelligence are involved too — apps that create playlists from biographical information are growing in sophistication, allowing therapists and care workers to cut out some of the legwork. But the real magic, it turns out, is in the personal. An old song sung in a familiar voice. A melody from a first dance. A hymn from childhood. For they are not mere noises, they are touchstones of identity, dignity and belonging. 

🎓 For Musicians Interested in Music Therapy

If you’re a musician who is motivated by this work, there are now accredited courses across the world that focus on receptive music therapy (RMT) and receptive cognitive therapy (RCT) techniques – specialist approaches that employ music listening as a therapeutic tool. Fortunately, most courses are available online and in blended formats to help you build on your musical knowledge and skills and take them out of the concert hall and into the community. It's also a rich path where your creativity can contribute to someone's healing.

🪕 Final Note

Whether you are a musician, a caregiver or just someone with a loved one in the grip of memory loss, I urge you to investigate this field. Keep it simple: Make a playlist. Ask questions. Listen together. Music might not be a cure, but in 2025, it is a vital part of care. As always, you can reply to this email and share your thoughts or stories. I would love to hear how music has served a healing role in your life.

Until next week,
Simon

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