Background: Research suggests that exposure to music may enhance autobiographical recall in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients. This study investigated whether exposure to music could enhance the production of self-defining memories, that is, memories that contribute to self-discovery, self-understanding, and identity in AD patients.
Methods: Twenty-two mild-stage AD patients and 24 healthy controls were asked to produce autobiographical memories in silence, while listening to researcher-chosen music, and to their own-chosen music.
Results: AD patients showed better autobiographical recall when listening to their own-chosen music than to researcher-chosen music or than in silence. More precisely, they produced more self-defining memories during exposure to their own-chosen music than to researcher-chosen music or during silence. Additionally, AD patients produced more self-defining memories than autobiographical episodes or personal-semantics during exposure to their own-chosen music. This pattern contrasted with the poor production of self-defining memories during silence or during exposure to researcher-chosen music. Healthy controls did not seem to enjoy the same autobiographical benefits nor the same self-defining memory enhancement in the self-chosen music condition.
Conclusions: Poor production of self-defining memories, as observed in AD, may somehow be alleviated by exposure to self-chosen music.
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; autobiographical memory; memory; music; self-defining memories.