NEUROPSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC IN AGING & ALZHEIMERS DEMENTIA

音乐是一种普遍现象，它涉及一种独特的 感知和认知功能。这项提议是一种尝试 启动建立神经生理学基础 对正常老年人和正常人音乐认知的认识 患有阿尔茨海默氏型老年痴呆症(SDAT)。我们的目标是 以填补目前理解中的两个严重空白。第一，学习 对老年人的音乐认知和表演的影响 基本上被忽视了。其次，虽然音乐是众所周知的轶事 对患有SDAT的人有很大的好处，几乎没有 已经进行了科学实验来表征和 理解这一现象。该项目的目标是：1) 为了展示可量化的神经生理指标， 始终如一地，也许是唯一地对应于音乐感知 2)发现音乐任务中的差异 策略和绩效水平作为年龄、存在的函数 SDAT，和音乐训练的程度；3)将这些联系起来 神经体力活动的差异；4)使用 当前对音乐认知的理解，以提高理解 事件相关电位。为了实现这些目标，正常 成年受试者，包括年轻人和老年人，以及患有SDAT的受试者将 参与一个范围广泛的五年系列活动， 复杂控制的心理物理和认知实验 将进行哪些神经生理测量。研究对象将 根据他们的音乐训练程度进行分类。这个 神经测量将专注于内源性事件相关 电位，尤其是P300和N4电位 与工作记忆的更新和检测有关 语义不一致。这些实验将涉及 音程、音色和节奏图形的辨别，以及 对节拍、旋律和和声闭合的认识 不协调。我们预计对神经活动的测量将 检测非神经生理学无法获得的差异 单单是措施。因此，表现相同的不同群体 测量结果可能显示事件相关电位的差异 质量和数量上的差异的症状 认知加工。我们的研究将产生基本的知识 关于很大程度上未被研究的认知和音乐维度 老年人的创造能力。

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.