CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It happens all the time. You can’t recall the lyrics to a familiar song until you hear the music. Then the words come flowing back, as though you’d never forgotten.
That phenomenon is at the heart of a new program at Southminster retirement community that uses personally meaningful music and digital technology to improve the quality of life for people whose memories are fading.
It’s working for John Robison, 85, a retired Charlotte businessman who lives in the south Charlotte complex. He suffers from dementia and has trouble with short-term memory. But when he dons the earphones to his iPod, his foot starts tapping and his eyes light up in recognition of songs by Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.
Robison’s wife, Rooney, 83, who also lives at Southminster, loves watching her husband get pleasure from the music.
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“It’s so important for people with prolonged memory problems to be able to relate to something in the world that they can still enjoy,” she said. “Every connection you can make is rewarding for the family.”
Southminster is the first retirement center in Mecklenburg County to be certified to use the Music & Memory program, which is the subject of the documentary “Alive Inside,” about how music therapy can ease the suffering of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
The idea is that songs associated with important personal events can trigger memory for people with dementia, Parkinson’s disease and other ailments that damage brain chemistry.
Calming music can enable the listener to focus and regain a connection to others. And ideally, it can also help replace or reduce the use of medicines for anxiety and depression.
At Southminster, four residents so far have been outfitted with iPods specifically programmed with music that has personal meaning. The center has also provided a $1,000 grant to train others to provide the music program at PACE of the Southern Piedmont, a nonprofit health-care provider that helps the frail elderly remain in their homes. In the next month, 10 PACE clients will be using iPods.
“Alive Inside” tells the story of Dan Cohen, a New York social worker who founded Music & Memory in 2010. A few years earlier, Cohen had the idea to use iPods, which had been growing in popularity, to provide personalized music to nursing home residents. It was a hit with residents, staff and families and became the prototype for a bigger effort.
With a foundation grant in 2008, Cohen took 200 iPods to residents of four New York long-term care facilities. Then came the documentary which made the program famous when a video clip of Henry, a nursing home resident reawakened by listening to his Cab Calloway favorites, went viral.
Since the founding of Music & Memory, hundreds of care facilities throughout the United States and Canada have implemented personalized music programs. “Alive Inside,” the film by director Michael Rossato-Bennett, won the audience award for top U.S. documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014.
On a recent morning, a group of about a dozen Southminster residents — some wheelchair-bound and not very responsive — listened to music and singing led by Madeline Chandler, Life Enrichment Program coordinator.
“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,” she sang. “I’m half crazy, over my love for you.”
Chandler moved around the room, sharing the microphone.
“It won’t be a stylish marriage,” sang one man in a wheelchair. “I can’t afford a carriage.”
The woman next to him finished: “But you’ll look sweet, upon the seat, of a bicycle built for two.”
Reactions varied, but one woman in the room who rarely talks opened her eyes and began moving her feet.
As the music continued, more people gathered at the door, drawn by the tunes from an earlier generation — “In the Good Old Summertime,” “Ain’t She Sweet,” “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”
Chandler said: “Music is something they will come out for.”
