OBJECTIVE: To observe the impact of individualized music listening via headphones on measures of affect, behavior, and cognition/memory in 19 institutionalized nursing home residents with mild or moderate dementia, as well as to examine whether music listening reduces antipsychotic medication utilization.

DESIGN: A 7-week observational, naturalistic, non-blinded, feasibility study comparing 4 groups (No music x 4 weeks; No music x 2 weeks followed by Music x 2 weeks; Music x 2 weeks followed by No music x 2 weeks, Music x 4 weeks).

SETTING: An extended care facility in Indianapolis, IN.

MEASUREMENTS: We administered the following tests at baseline, after two weeks of music or non-music listening and a week after the music intervention period ended: Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI), Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Index (CMAI), Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Famous Names Test (FNT), and Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R). We also assessed changes to scheduled medications related to dementia treatment and to medications known to impact cognitive function to observe the impact of music on medication utilization.

RESULTS: Patients who were enrolled in our study improved in their general cognition and retrospective memory across the seven weeks of our study (although the extent of this improvement did not depend on music listening). The four groups (Music, No Music then Music, Music then No Music, and No Music) displayed different patterns of agitation across the course of our study. We did not document any initiation, discontinuation, or other changes to scheduled medications.

CONCLUSIONS: This study of music listening did not reveal strong evidence of changes in affect, behavior, or cognition, although it did show trends toward such results, particularly for agitation and memory. The small number of research participants may have limited our power to detect real underlying differences between the patients who listened to music and those who did not. Music did not influence medication utilization, including antipsychotic agents, and this is likely because the changes in agitation we observed were not of sufficient intensity or duration to impact medication regimens on such a short-term basis. Additional or persistent decreases in agitation might affect medication regimens over a longer period of time. Importantly, this feasibility study demonstrated that individualized music from patients' late teens and early 20s can be safely utilized with elderly patients with dementia in a nursing home setting and provides a supporting foundation to promote additional research with larger populations over longer intervention periods