Musiquence – Design, Implementation and Validation of a Customizable Music and Reminiscence Cognitive Stimulation Platform for People with Dementia
About this good practice
Dementia is a neurodegenerative disease that affects millions of individuals worldwide and is challenging to diagnose as symptoms may only be perceivable decades later. The condition leads to a gradual loss of memory, learning, orientation, language, and comprehension skills, which compromises activities of daily living. Health-related costs caused by dementia will continue to increase over the next few years.
Non pharmaceutical methods such as music and reminiscence therapies have gained acceptance as patients with dementia positively respond to such approaches even at later stages of the disease.
The development of serious games has gained attention as an alternative approach to stimulating patients.
However, the clinical implications that serious games have on individuals with dementia is still unclear.
- How does the practice reach its objectives, and how it is implemented?
After identifying the problems mentioned above, we developed a music and reminiscence- based platform, which has been designed according to the needs of people with dementia and the feedback of healthcare professionals. After developing the platform, we did a longitudinal study to study the therapeutic impact of music and reminiscence in the dementia population. We performed a battery of neuropsychological assessments before and after 14 bi-weekly cognitive stimulation sessions (see poster).
Resources needed
We required human resources such as clinical psychologists and healthcare professionals to run experiments.
Evidence of success
We published six conference papers and one journal paper. Two more Journal articles are being prepared for future publication. We also published 3 posters, one oral presentation and one demonstration at Encontro Ciência 2020. In addition, during that time, the project was awarded a Best Demo Award, Best Poster Award and the Health Innovation Award 2021
Potential for learning or transfer
The potential for learning or transfer to other project partners is quite high. The addressed problem – dementia – is a global challenge on the mental wellbeing of the population and the technology that has been used to develop the platform and scientific evaluations is common and open-source. Translation of the platform can be easily done.
Further information
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