Improvements in Dementia Symptoms Through Personalized Music
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Updated: Jan 15, 2026

Clinical Practice Protocol of Creative Music Therapy for Preterm Infants and Their Parents in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Published on: January 7, 2020
1The Mary Black College of Nursing, University of South Carolina Upstate, Valley Falls, South Carolina.
Purpose:
Routinely listening to personalized music selections has been shown to reduce agitation, the most common symptom of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. The purpose of the current study was to assess changes in participant agitation by providing a 6-week personalized music listening (PML) intervention of 30 minutes to 10 nursing home residents with dementia.
Method:
The Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI) was administered every 2 weeks throughout the study period. The objective was to see if PML would reduce symptoms of agitation, as measured by participants' CMAI scores.
Results:
Results from a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance showed improvement in CMAI scores pre- versus post-intervention. Using a Greenhouse-Geisser correction, CMAI score reduction was statistically significant at different time points of the study (F [1.487, 13.886] = 4.63, p = 0.044).
Conclusion:
Results suggest that PML can be an effective and low-cost means for improving dementia-related agitation in the short term.
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