Benefits of Personalised Music in Dementia - a Feasibility Study

Summary

There is growing evidence for the benefits of music for individuals living with dementia but there has been limited research looking specifically at personalised music. Methodologies have not yet been developed to generate and play personalised music playlists quickly and cost effectively. The research team proposes a feasibility study to develop effective methodologies for:

i. efficient creation and delivery of personalised playlists for people with mild to moderate dementia in care homes; and

ii. assessing their responses to this music.

A long-list of personalised music (about 100 tracks) will be created by asking residents and their carers about the resident's musical tastes and background (particularly from their teenage years). A refined personalised playlist (of 10-20 tracks) will be created by playing excerpts from these tracks to the resident and gauging their responses including through direct feedback from the resident and their carer(s) plus observations of changes in facial expression, together with directly observed movements of hands, feet and/ or head, and changes in pulse rate (a monitor worn on the wrist to measure movement and pulse and the investigators will ask to film sessions). Care home staff and informal carers will use these playlists within the residents' care and the research team will use feedback from residents and carers to assess responses and explore whether factors such as the timing of listening or delivery methodology appear to affect the resident's well-being over time.

The findings from this study will be used to develop automated approaches to playlist creation (e.g. an App) and to inform further feasibility studies to: test and refine methodologies for use with participants with more advanced dementia; and explore more systematically the benefits of personalised music and factors that affect this, ultimately to inform the design of a subsequent larger scale intervention study.

Two substantial amendments were approved to this existing feasibility study on October 23, 2020. The two substantial amendments are:

1. To extend the main study to include participants who may lack capacity to consent.
2. A sub-study using fMRI to explore the mechanisms underlying reported beneficial effects of personalised music listening on behavioural and psychological symptoms in people living with dementia.

A further amendment was approved in January 2021, to recruit 1000 families affected by dementia, living at home or in the community, to use our recently developed WebApp to create a personalised playlist for their loved one living with dementia and provide their perceptions of how the music has impacted the well-being of the person with dementia.

Conditions

• Dementia

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Personalised music listening

People will be sequentially recruited to discover their favourite music playlist, monitor their emotional responses to specific songs and explore the impact of listening to the music, on their behavioural and psychological symptoms. This will be done through a one hour music listening session, to discover the top 10-20 songs they respond to. It will then be followed by multiple shorter music listening sessions, initiated by the dementia resident themselves or their carer, where they listen to their favourite songs during their day, before difficult moments of care or during visits with their families.

BEHAVIORAL

Using fMRI to investigate the effect of listening to personalised music evoking positive emotional response on brain activation

12 of the recruited participants, who have symptoms and signs of mild to moderate dementia will be invited to take part in this sub-study. Using an amended version of a previously employed fMRI paradigm, each study participant will be presented inside the MRI scanner with short 30 second epochs of music (identified as evoking a positive or neutral emotional response) in a block design. Each 30 second epoch of music will be followed by a 16 second period when participants will be asked to rate subjective changes in their affective state using a computerised visual analogue scale. Epochs of positive emotional stimuli will alternate with epochs of neutral emotional stimuli in a counterbalanced order of presentation in 2 runs of 10 epochs each (5 positive and 5 neutral in each run).

BEHAVIORAL

Personalised music listening in the community

1000 families affected by dementia will be invited to use our WebApp to create a personalised playlist for their loved one with dementia and share their perceptions of how the music has affected the well-being of their loved one.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Music for my Mind

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Keith McAdam · Music for my Mind

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-11-28

Primary Completion

2026-04-30

Completion

2026-04-30

Countries

• United Kingdom

Study Locations