Effect of traditional Persian music on improving the working memory and cognitive function of 50-65 year- old females of Iran Alzheimer Association

Music and melodious sounds are one of the most important and common communicative tools among nations and also one of the factors of healing personal disorders. As Alzheimer causes disorder in individual's lives, this study aims to examine the effect of traditional Persian music on improving the working memory and cognitive function of 50-65 year-old females who suffered Alzheimer and referred to the Iran Alzheimer Association for help. This study was conducted in an experimental research method with pre-test and post-test designs allocated to an experimental group and to a control group. Through a convenience sampling procedure, a sample of 30 females, 50-65 years of age, sufferring from Alzheimer was selected to participate in this study and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups, 15 persons in each group. Two kinds of tests, the Luria- Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery test (LNNB-I) and the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) were used. After pre-test the experimental group were given a total of 10 sessions, 3 times a week of training music at home and practicing with CDs and Daff or tambourine ( an Iranian traditional music instrument,). In order to analyze data, in addition to descriptive statistics method, covariance analyses in SPSS 18 statistical software were used.
Findings: According to one-way analyses of covariance (ANCOVA), there were differences among the experimental group before interaction and after the elimination of pre-test effect via covariance analyses procedure, the effect of interaction on the experimental group was significant.
It is concluded that teaching traditional music to people suffering Alzheimer improves the performance of working memory (p=0.04), and the cognitive function (0.002). Moreover it causes the enhancement of central execution processes of music (p=0.002), speech (p=0.001), and visual (p=0.003), in females aged 50-65 suffering from Alzheimer.