MUSIC IMPROVISATION AS AN INTERVENTION TO MODULATE EMOTIONAL MEMORY. AN EXPLORATORY STUDY WITH OLDER PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA

Authors

  • Verónika Diaz Abrahan Laboratorio Interdisciplinario de Neurociencia Cognitiva (LINC), Centro de Investigación en Neurociencias y Neuropsicología (CINN), Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Palermo (UP). Buenos Aires, Argentina. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5003-4274
  • Morena López Laboratorio Interdisciplinario de Neurociencia Cognitiva (LINC), Centro de Investigación en Neurociencias y Neuropsicología (CINN), Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Palermo (UP). Buenos Aires, Argentina https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2518-1816
  • Nadia Justel Laboratorio Interdisciplinario de Neurociencia Cognitiva (LINC), Centro de Investigación en Neurociencias y Neuropsicología (CINN), Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Palermo (UP). Buenos Aires, Argentina. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0145-3357

Abstract

Background: The increase in the prevalence of dementia in the global population raises discussions about public health, in response to which strategies are being developed to address cognitive and well-being issues. This exploratory study evaluated whether a focused musical improvisation intervention can modulate the consolidation of episodic memories in older adults with moderate to severe dementia. Materials and methods: Eleven participants (M = 81.74, SD = 2.77; 73% women) learned a sequence of emotional and neutral pictures and were immediately assigned at pseudo-random to a musical improvisation or silence group. Immediate and delayed (seven days later) memory was measured using free recall and recognition tasks. Results: Although no differences were observed in free recall, the group that improvised music recognized more emotional pictures at the delayed measurement (p = .03, r = 0.54). Conclusions: Musical improvisation may promote memory consolidation through emotional and social mechanisms that are still preserved in dementia. These results support the integration of creative musical interventions into cognitive stimulation programs and offer preliminary evidence of the neurocognitive potential of improvisation as a therapeutic tool in aging and dementia.

Portada, Desierto Florido, Atacama, Chile. Fotografía Mariela Galindo

Published

08.12.2025

How to Cite

Diaz Abrahan , V., López, M., & Justel, N. (2025). MUSIC IMPROVISATION AS AN INTERVENTION TO MODULATE EMOTIONAL MEMORY. AN EXPLORATORY STUDY WITH OLDER PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA. Panamerican Journal of Neuropsychology, 19(2). Retrieved from https://www.cnps.cl/index.php/cnps/article/view/590

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 2 (2025): CNPs

Section

Original Papers

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Verónika Diaz Abrahan , Morena López, Nadia Justel

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Articles published in this journal are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. This means that authors retain full rights over their research and publications at all times. As a journal, we fully respect and promote the principles of open access established by this license, allowing the work to be shared, adapted, and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the authors and any derivative works are licensed under the same terms.

Authors are responsible for obtaining the required permission when they wish to reproduce part of the material (figures, etc.) from other publications.

Likewise, CNPs allows authors to host in their personal sites or other repositories that they deem convenient the Final and Definitive Version of the published article with the format assigned by the journal. In no case do we allow access to preprints of the article under evaluation or already published.

When submitting an article to CNPs you are aware that all the contents of CNPs are under a Creative Commons License. In which it is allowed to copy and share the contents freely, always making reference to the origin of the publication and its author.