She rarely knows who she is.
She rarely knows where she is.
She rarely recognises the people around her.
Yet through the fog of vascular dementia, this 101 year-old woman can pluck one of nearly 400 songs from her memory and play it as if she were in the prime of her youth.
This is the story of ME (her real name is unlisted in respect of her privacy), who performs at assisted-living facilities and at various events across California.
It was during one of these events – a Christmas party held around eight years ago – that she played for Eleanor Selfridge-Field, a consulting professor in the field of music and symbolic systems at Stanford University.
“Everybody in the room was totally startled,” she recalled to New Scientist. “She looked so frail. Once she sat down at the piano, she just wasn’t frail at all. She was full of verve.”
Ever since, Selfridge-Field has been observing ME’s musical talent and studying her other capabilities, which she detailed at this week’s International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition in San Francisco, California.
Vascular dementia is the second most common form of dementia, and is responsible for 15-20% of cases. It is commonly caused by stroke, such as the one ME suffered in her 80s. She recognises the majority of people she knew prior to the event, but beyond that her memories focus on specific periods of her life, such as early childhood.
That’s not stopping ME’s ability to belt out a range of songs from gospel hymns to pop classics, nor preventing her from producing some original tunes; a feat just about impossible for any centenarians, especially one under the grip of such a cruel affliction.
What makes cases like ME’s so fascinating is how they leave even the most knowledgable neuroscientists and therapists stumped. Medical professionals have, at present, no understand of where music resides in human memory, but what’s clear is the positive impact it has.
“Music evokes emotion, and emotion can bring with it memory… it brings back the feeling of life when nothing else can,” said Oliver Sacks, one of the leading advocates for music therapy up until his death in 2015. Perhaps music as a solution can evolve into music as a cure if a discovery of why musical talent and knowledge is so often impervious to dementia.
Selfridge-Fields research is released at the same time as more positive news regarding the fight against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease: scientists from Adelaide’s Flinders University and America’s Institute of Molecular Medicine and University of California have developed what they believe is a vaccine for the illnesses.
The vaccine targets proteins in the brain that interfere with neurons, and human trials may begin within the next few years.
In the meantime, ME’s just going to keep on playing.