Proceedings of the 5th Triennial ESCOM Conference 8-13 September 2003, Hanover University of Music and Drama, Germany 548 ISBN 3-931852-67-9 ISSN 1617-6847 R. Kopiez, A. C. Lehmann, I. Wolther & C. Wolf (Eds.) ABSTRACT This study investigated the music perception of patients with probable Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Although the clinical syndrome of AD is characterized by an acquired decline of cognitive functioning, current bibliography suggests that musical activities may be preserved while other cognitive functions fail. In our research, we tested the reaction of AD patients to simple music units and sound parameters as well as to complex music patterns and melodies. Three different groups of participants were tested: A group of 30 young adults (20-30 years old), a group of 16 individuals (67-77 years old) diagnosed as having probable Alzheimer’s disease of mild to moderate levels, and a group of 30 normal elderly adults (67-77 years old) used as a control group. Moreover, all the elderly participants – healthy and patients- were tested as to their cognitive ability using the MMSE test. The experimental material consisted of eight tests divided into two levels that relected the perceptual organization of simple and complex stimuli, respectively. The irst level consisted of four tests that examined the participants’ ability to perceive changes in frequency and timbre as well as changes in rhythmic and volume patterns. The second level consisted of four non-familiar melodies, which were composed so as to test ability of detecting disruptions in the continuity of rhythm, melody, volume, and timbre. A series of 3x4 mixed design ANOVAs performed on the data showed that AD patients had in general lower performance in the perception of music as compared to healthy adults. Furthermore, results suggested that the complexity of musical stimuli as well as music parameters, particularly rhythm and pitch, affected participants’ performance. Finally, detailed analysis underscored the importance of the melodies nature on participants’ ability to correctly identify music differentiations. 1. INTRODUCTION Brain processing of music requires the engagement of multiple interconnected neural networks that can maintain speciic musical functions, even when some kind of brain insult, results a severe global decline (Peretz, 2002). Yet, examination of amusic patients – regardless of the source of brain damage that causes the amusia –shows that music cognition is not affected in its entirety (Peretz & Hebert, 1995). This means that although the clinical syndrome of AD is characterized by a central auditory dysfunction and an acquired decline of cognitive functioning (Gates et al., 1996), we may hypothesize that some musical abilities may be preserved. Studies on music perception of AD patients are very few up to now and investigated only speciic aspects of music cognition. Speciically, the research of Bartlet, Halpern, and Dowling (1995) tested AD patients’ ability to recognize familiar from unfamiliar melodies of AD. It was found that AD patients were impaired relatively to controls in old/new recognition of highly familiar items, and they performed better in familiar tunes, put down as “traditional”, than the than in novel ones. A case study reported by Aldridge (1998) presents a demented amateur pianist who knew many folk songs and was able to sing them alone, but she was unable to build a freely improvised melody from a selection of tones. She was also quite accurate in rhythm and melodic imitation but she needed often instructions about how to proceed. Electroencephalographic brain mapping during music perception conditions showed decreases of EEG power in Delta frequencies (Gunter et al., 1993), a positive effect that could possibly explain the remarkable responsiveness of patients to music (Aldridge, 1998). These indings suggest that AD patients may preserve some aspects of music perception although their overall performance declines. However, the extant studies are not detailed enough so as to identify which aspects of music perception are preserved and which suffer most. The present study aimed at investigating the perception, by patients in mild to moderate AD phases, of isolated simple music units and sound parameters as compared to their occurrence in complex music patterns and melodies. 2. METHOD 2.1. Participants The sample comprised a total of 76 non-musicians divided in three groups: 30 young adults – 15 male and 15 female, (Mean age = 21.66), 30 elderly adults – 12 male and 18 female – as the control group (Mean age = 69.96), and 16 AD patients – 9 male and 7 female (Mean age = 71.33) – diagnosed as having probable Alzheimer’s disease by the medical staff of the 1st Neurological Clinic of of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. All participants answered a speciically designed questionnaire that recorded their educational level, interests, origin and music background. They were also tested as to their peripheral auditory ability with a test battery, including pure-tone thresholds, speech audiogram and word recognition in a quiet room, to eliminate any possibility of inadequate hearing. Moreover, all the elderly participants – healthy and patients – were tested as to their cognitive ability using in the MMSE (Mini Mental State Examination). MUSIC PERCEPTION IN PATIENTS WITH DEMENTIA DUE TO ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE Demetre Yannou 1 , Stavros Baloyiannis 2 , Anastasia Kostaridou-Eukleides 3 Grigorios Kioseoglou 3 , Eriili Damianou-Marinis 1 , Despina Klonari 1 Evangelia Nakopoulou 3 , Katerina Tzedaki 4 1 Department of Music Studies, Aristotle University Thessaloniki, Greece 2 1 st Department of Neurology, Aristotle University Thessaloniki, Greece 3 Department of Psychology, Aristotle University Thessaloniki, Greece 4 Department of Music – City University London