Johnson J K, Cotman C W, Tasaki C S, Shaw G L
Department of Physics, University of California, Irvine 92697, USA.
Neurol Res. 1998 Dec;20(8):666-72. doi: 10.1080/01616412.1998.11740582.
Several recent studies have investigated the effectiveness of various behavioral interventions on the cognitive performance of subjects with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Simulations of Shaw's structured model of the cortex led to the predictions that music might enhance spatial-temporal reasoning. A subsequent behavioral study in college students documented an improvement in scores on a spatial-temporal task after listening to a Mozart piano sonata. In this study, we investigated the enhancement of scores on a spatial-temporal task after a Mozart listening condition in a set of twins who are discordant for AD. After listening to an excerpt from a Mozart piano sonata, the AD twin showed considerable improvement on the spatial-temporal task when compared with pretest scores. Furthermore, no enhancement of scores was seen following either of the control conditions (i.e., silence or 1930s popular tunes). This finding suggests that music may be used as a tool to investigate functional plasticity in Alzheimer's disease and to better understand the underlying pathophysiology.
最近的几项研究调查了各种行为干预对阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者认知表现的有效性。对肖的皮质结构模型进行模拟后得出预测，即音乐可能会增强时空推理能力。随后一项针对大学生的行为研究记录到，在听了一首莫扎特钢琴奏鸣曲后，学生们在一项时空任务中的得分有所提高。在本研究中，我们调查了一组患AD不一致的双胞胎在听莫扎特音乐后，其在时空任务上的得分提高情况。与预测试得分相比，患AD的双胞胎在听了一段莫扎特钢琴奏鸣曲的节选后，在时空任务上有了显著提高。此外，在两种对照条件（即安静或20世纪30年代流行曲调）下，得分均未提高。这一发现表明，音乐可作为一种工具，用于研究阿尔茨海默病中的功能可塑性，并更好地理解其潜在的病理生理学。
