EEG Analysis of the Contribution of Music Therapy and Virtual Reality to the Improvement of Cognition in Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting nearly 9.9 million new people every year. The disease provokes important memory and cognitive impairment, eventually causing individuals to forget their loved ones and rendering them completely dependent on their caretakers. Alzheimer’s patients typically experience more negative emotions, such as frustration and apathy, than healthy older adults. There is currently no cure for the disease. Our research group explores how the integration of virtual reality (VR) and an EEG-based intelligent agent in music therapy can alleviate psychological and cognitive symptoms of the disease. We propose a theory explaining how, through activation of the brain reward system, music can reduce negative emotions, increase positive emotions and as a result increase performance on cognitive tasks. The results of our experimental study concord with our theory: emotional states of participants are improved, as per recorded through EEG, and performances on memory tasks show improvement following the intervention. We believe that the combination of EEG brain assessment, VR and music therapy is a promising method for emotional states and cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.