Emotional valence and musical factors associated with music-evoked memories in Alzheimer’s disease

Music is a powerful tool for evoking emotions and memories in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and is commonly used in dementia care. In healthy older adults, music-evoked memories vary depending on the experienced valence (pleasant vs. unpleasant) of songs, show a reminiscence bump (RB) for mid-childhood/adolescence, and are linked to certain musical features (e.g. rhythm). However, little is known how these factors change from healthy ageing to advanced AD.

This study combined ratings of emotional valence, familiarity, and autobiographical salience and Music Information Retrieval (MIR) features from 70 excerpts of traditional folk and popular songs from the 1950–1970 s. Participants included healthy older adults (n = 40) and persons with mild (n = 29) and moderate/severe (n = 32) dementia. Compared to healthy older adults, AD groups showed lower familiarity and autobiographical salience but comparable valence.

Relationships between valence and familiarity and autobiographical salience became increasingly linear with advancing AD. The RB peaked earlier in childhood as disease severity increased. Across groups, lower harmonic complexity predicted higher autobiographical salience and weaker pulse predicted higher familiarity, with stronger valence dependency in AD.

These findings highlight how music-evoked memories change along the AD continuum and may support individualizing music interventions in dementia care. We are grateful to all study participants for their time and contribution. We also extend our sincere thanks to the relatives and caregivers who supported the participants with Alzheimer’s disease in taking part in the study.

In addition, we would like to thank Eija Lahdensuo, Teija Saarinen, and Mikko Semi for their help in coordinating, and everyone who helped in recruiting the participants. The study was supported by funding from the Research Council of Finland (Grants 299044, 306625, 327996, 338448, 346211, 364220), European Research Council (Grant 803466), and Jenny & Antti Wihuri Foundation (Grant 00250350). Teppo Särkämö and Anni Pitkäniemi contributed equally to this work.

Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain, University of Helsinki & University of Jyväskylä, Helsinki, Finland Ilja Salakka, Lotta M. Kaila, Petri Toiviainen, Teppo Särkämö & Anni Pitkäniemi Cognitive Brain Research Unit (CBRU), Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Ilja Salakka, Lotta M. Kaila, Teppo Särkämö & Anni Pitkäniemi Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland The authors declare no competing interests.