Wu Tingting, Sun Fangfang, Guo Yiwei, Zhai Mingwei, Yu Shanen, Chu Jiantao, Yu Chenhao, Yang Yong
School of Automation, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou 310018, China.
Entropy (Basel). 2022 Aug 17;24(8):1137. doi: 10.3390/e24081137.
Music has become a common adjunctive treatment for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in recent years. Because Alzheimer’s disease can be classified into different degrees of dementia according to its severity (mild, moderate, severe), this study is to investigate whether there are differences in brain response to music stimulation in AD patients with different degrees of dementia. Seventeen patients with mild-to-moderate dementia, sixteen patients with severe dementia, and sixteen healthy elderly participants were selected as experimental subjects. The nonlinear characteristics of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were extracted from 64-channel EEG signals acquired before, during, and after music stimulation. The results showed the following. (1) At the temporal level, both at the whole brain area and sub-brain area levels, the EEG responses of the mild-to-moderate patients showed statistical differences from those of the severe patients (p < 0.05). The nonlinear characteristics during music stimulus, including permutation entropy (PmEn), sample entropy (SampEn), and Lempel−Ziv complexity (LZC), were significantly higher in both mild-to-moderate patients and healthy controls compared to pre-stimulation, while it was significantly lower in severe patients. (2) At the spatial level, the EEG responses of the mild-to-moderate patients and the severe patients showed statistical differences (p < 0.05), showing that as the degree of dementia progressed, fewer pairs of EEG characteristic showed significant differences among brain regions under music stimulation. In this paper, we found that AD patients with different degrees of dementia had different EEG responses to music stimulation. Our study provides a possible explanation for this discrepancy in terms of the pathological progression of AD and music cognitive hierarchy theory. Our study has adjunctive implications for clinical music therapy in AD., potentially allowing for more targeted treatment. Meanwhile, the variations in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients in response to music stimulation might be a model for investigating the neural mechanism of music perception.
近年来，音乐已成为治疗阿尔茨海默病（AD）的一种常见辅助疗法。由于阿尔茨海默病可根据其严重程度（轻度、中度、重度）分为不同程度的痴呆，本研究旨在调查不同程度痴呆的AD患者对音乐刺激的大脑反应是否存在差异。选取17例轻度至中度痴呆患者、16例重度痴呆患者和16名健康老年参与者作为实验对象。从音乐刺激前、刺激期间和刺激后采集的64通道脑电图（EEG）信号中提取EEG信号的非线性特征。结果如下：（1）在时间层面，无论是在全脑区域还是脑亚区域层面，轻度至中度患者的EEG反应与重度患者的EEG反应均存在统计学差异（p<0.05）。与刺激前相比，轻度至中度患者和健康对照在音乐刺激期间的非线性特征，包括排列熵（PmEn）、样本熵（SampEn）和Lempel-Ziv复杂度（LZC）均显著升高，而重度患者则显著降低。（2）在空间层面，轻度至中度患者和重度患者的EEG反应存在统计学差异（p<0.05），表明随着痴呆程度的进展，在音乐刺激下脑区之间显示出显著差异的EEG特征对减少。在本文中，我们发现不同程度痴呆的AD患者对音乐刺激有不同的EEG反应。我们的研究从AD的病理进展和音乐认知层次理论方面为这种差异提供了一种可能的解释。我们的研究对AD的临床音乐治疗具有辅助意义，可能使治疗更具针对性。同时，阿尔茨海默病患者大脑对音乐刺激的反应变化可能是研究音乐感知神经机制的一个模型。
