A Multimodal Music Therapy Intervention for Engaging Persons With Severe Dementia

Summary

The goal of this pilot randomized clinical trial is to learn if a music therapy treatment, called AMUSED, can improve engagement and reduce behavioral symptoms in older adults with severe dementia who live in care facilities. The main questions it aims to answer are:

* Is it feasible to conduct a full-scale trial of AMUSED?
* Can investigators identify the best outcome measures to assess impact on behavioral symptoms of dementia?
* Does speech offer a useful indicator of treatment effectiveness? Researchers will compare a group-based music therapy treatment to a reading activity to learn if music therapy leads to greater improvements in behavioral symptoms and speech patterns.

Participants will:

* Participate in either music therapy (includes live music, singing, and rhythmic instrument playing) or a reading group with stories about life and nature and talk about memories.
* Attend small group sessions twice a week for 12 weeks, with each session lasting 40 minutes between lunch and dinner.
* Be observed and assessed for behavioral symptoms, cognition, and speech several times during treatment and at a 4-week follow-up.

Conditions

• Dementia Severe

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

AMUSED

Delivered live by a board-certified music therapist (MT-BC) 40 min 2x/week for 12 weeks (24 total sessions; 16 total hours) in small groups of 3-5 people. A Multimodal mUSic therapy intervention for Engaging persons with severe Dementia (AMUSED) uses live participant-preferred music and progressively layers singing, touch, and rhythmic instrument playing concurrent with participant behavioral responses. Follows the Clinical Practice Model for Persons with Dementia and implementation strategies that promote cognition, attention, familiarity, audibility, structure, autonomy per participants' strengths, interests, preferences, culture, and momentary responses. Each small group works with the same music therapist throughout the study.

BEHAVIORAL

Reading Aloud

Delivered live by a trained research assistant ("interventionist") 40 min 2x/week for 12 weeks (24 total sessions; 16 total hours) in small groups of 3-5 people. The interventionist will read aloud from age-appropriate books (Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul by Jack Canfield; World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil) selected to have sufficient material for all sessions, contain short stories to accommodate for attention span and session length, and offer choice. Follows implementation strategies identical to the music therapy arm (i.e., within the Clinical Practice Model for Persons with Dementia) that promote cognition, attention, familiarity, audibility, structure, autonomy per participants' strengths, interests, preferences, culture, and momentary responses. However, no music (including musical references) is used. Each small group works with the same reading interventionist throughout the study.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Aging (NIA)

  collaborator NIH

• Alaine E Hernandez, PhD

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Alaine E. Reschke-Hernandez, PhD · University of Kentucky

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-03-12

Primary Completion

2026-08-15

Completion

2026-09-15

Countries

• United States

Study Locations