Reporting Case Studies: The Effects of Familiar, Unfamiliar Music and Audiobooks Exposure on Speech Parameters of Elderly With Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease is a cognitive disorder common among elderly whereby neurodegeneration
occurs rapidly as a result of decline in brain activity. There have been many studies linking music
memory with cognition among patients with Alzheimer’s disease. This multiple case study (n = 3),
seeks to investigate he effects of familiar and unfamiliar music on the speech fundamental frequency
(F0), intensity range, and speech rate of 3 elderly subjects with Alzheimer’s disease. The speech
parameters after exposure to familiar and unfamiliar music were measured longitudinally over a period
of 21 weeks. A listening task to an audiobook was treated as control. Data revealed that in all of these
subjects, there was wide variability in performance with no common pattern for familiar music.
However, for unfamiliar music, two subjects showed increase in their speech rate. The third subject
showed increase in F0 range. It is suggested that there may be more to understand how familiar and
novel stimuli influence speech production in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The results also
suggest that unfamiliar music may have significant effect on the speech rate of subjects with AD,
however, it is difficult to gauge the long term effect of music on speech production of these
Alzheimer’s disease patients. Instead, the results indicated that there may be more to understand how
familiar and novel stimuli influence speech production in Alzheimer’s disease patients.