NEUROPSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC IN AGING & ALZHEIMERS DEMENTIA

音乐是一种普遍现象，它包含着一种独特的复杂性， 知觉和认知功能。 这项提议是一种尝试， 建立了神经生理学基础， 对正常老年人和成人音乐认知的理解 老年痴呆症（SDAT）。 我们的目标是 来填补目前认识上的两个严重空白。 第一，研究 老年人的音乐认知和表现的研究 基本上被忽视了。 第二，虽然音乐是众所周知的， 对于患有SDAT的人来说，这是一个很大的好处，几乎没有任何 科学实验已经完成， 理解这个现象。 该项目的目标是：1） 以证明可量化的神经生理学测量， 一致地，也许是唯一地对应于音乐感知 2）发现音乐任务的差异 策略和绩效水平作为年龄、存在 的SDAT，和音乐训练的程度; 3）将这些 神经物理活动的差异; 4）使用 当前对音乐认知的理解，以增强理解 事件相关电位 为了实现这些目标，正常 成人受试者，包括年轻人和老年人，以及SDAT受试者将 参加一个广泛的五年系列， 复杂的控制心理物理和认知实验， 将进行哪些神经生理学测量。 受试者将 根据他们的音乐训练程度进行分类。 的 神经测量将集中在内源性事件相关的 电位，特别是P300和N4电位， 与工作记忆的更新和 语义不一致。 实验将涉及 辨别音程、音色和节奏图，以及 对节拍、旋律和和声闭合的认知， 不协调 我们希望对神经活动的测量 检测非神经生理学无法获得的差异 措施单独。 因此，不同的组具有相同的性能 测量结果可能显示事件相关电位的差异 质量和数量差异的症状， 认知加工 我们的研究将产生基础知识 关于认知的音乐维度， 老年人的创造力。

Music is a universal phenomenon which involves a unique complex of perceptual and cognitive functions. This proposal is an attempt to initiate the establishment of neurophysiological basis for the understanding of musical cognition in normal aging and in persons with senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type (SDAT). Our goal is to fill two serious gaps in present understanding. First, studies of musical cognition and performance in older persons have been largely neglected. Second, while music is anecdotally well known to be a great benefit to persons suffering from SDAT, hardly any scientific experimentation has been done to characterize and understand this phenomenon. The objectives of the project are: 1) to demonstrate quantifiable neurophysiological measures which consistently and perhaps uniquely correspond to musical perception and cognition; 2) to discover differences in musical task strategies and performance levels as a function of age, presence of SDAT, and degree of musical training; 3) to correlate these differences with differences in neurophysical activity; 4) to use current understanding of musical cognition to enhance understanding of event-related potentials. To accomplish these goals, normal adult subjects, both young and old, and subjects with SDAT will participate in an extensive five-year series of increasingly complex controlled psychophysical and cognitive experiments during which neurophysiological measurements will be taken. Subjects will be classified according to their degree of musical training. The neural measurements will focus on endogenous event-related potentials, especially the P300 and N4 potentials which correlate with the updating of working memory and the detection of semantic incongruity, respectively. The experiments will involve discrimination of intervals, timbres, and rhythmic figures, and cognition of meter and of melodic and harmonic closure and incongruity. We expect that measurements of neural activity will detect differences not obtainable from non-neurophysiological measures alone. Thus, different groups with equal performance measures may exhibit differences in event-related potentials symptomatic of qualitative and quantitative differences in cognitive processing. Our studies will yield fundamental knowledge about the largely unstudied musical dimension of cognition and creative ability in older persons.