AMSTERDAM (AP) \u2014 Megan Worthy still recalls singing in a choir in the Australian capital, Canberra, as she was growing up.<\/p>\n
Now, as a rare form of early-onset dementia chips away at her vision and other brain functions, the 58-year-old is transported back to her musical youth as she and her daughter, Bronte, sing together with other people with neurological conditions in an Amsterdam concert hall, the Concertgebouw.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty brutal,\u201d Worthy said of her rare neurological condition. \u201cI\u2019m starting to lose everything, you know, and this is really rewarding and seeing all these people, yeah, it did make me have a lot of memories.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was taking part in a so-called \u201csinging circle\u201d run by opera singer Maartje de Lint at the landmark concert venue for seniors with what she calls \u201cvulnerable brains,\u201d many of whom have a form of dementia or Parkinson’s disease.<\/p>\n
Millions of people have some form of dementia, a progressive loss of memory, reasoning, language skills and other cognitive functions. People can experience changes in personality, emotional control, even visual perception. Alzheimer\u2019s is the most widely recognized type, but there are many others, with their own symptoms and underlying biology. Small strokes, for example, can impair blood flow to the brain and trigger what\u2019s called vascular dementia.<\/p>\n
The singers in Amsterdam, who each pay 20 euros ($23.50) to attend, are arranged with their carers in a circle of chairs under a ceiling hung with 14 crystal chandeliers in the venue’s ornate Mirror Hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always say, music is like vitamins,\u201d said Selien Kneppers, 78, who once managed a Dutch boogie woogie and blues band and now regularly attends the singing circle.<\/p>\n
Roving around the middle, often dropping to one knee and reaching out her hands to connect with a singer, is De Lint. She and other singers in her organization crisscross the Netherlands and Europe, leading singing workshops.<\/p>\n
Singing, De Lint says, is a way of keeping the brain active and bringing family members and their loved ones closer together.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we give people perspective,” she says before one of her singing sessions in Amsterdam. “It\u2019s like actually a training for the brain, for the body, to get more resilient and understand the perspective that you still have.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hour-long session clearly has an emotional effect on the singers and their carers. Helpers regularly hand out paper tissues for people to dab away tears. One man tenderly reached out a hand to touch the face of the woman next to him as they sang songs ranging from Elvis Presley’s \u201cLove Me Tender\u201d to Frank Sinatra’s \u201cFly Me to the Moon” and \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neurobiologist Brankele Frank, who is not connected to De Lint’s project, agrees that singing can be beneficial to people with dementia or Alzheimer\u2019s or other kinds of neurodegenerative diseases.<\/p>\n
Music “speaks to brain areas that haven\u2019t really been degenerated yet,” she told The Associated Press. “So, for example, their verbal skills often are compromised, but music speaks to parts of the brain that don\u2019t necessarily need verbal skills. And so it taps into their emotion, their sense of self, their identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scientists are studying the potential benefits of music for people with dementia, traumatic brain injuries, Parkinson\u2019s disease and stroke. Music lights up multiple regions of the brain, strengthening neural connections between areas that govern language, memories, emotions and movement.<\/p>\n
Megan’s daughter, Bronte Henfling, said that even getting her mother to a new environment that was not a medical appointment to discuss her posterior cortical atrophy felt good.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust hearing everyone come together and sing … it reminds us that we\u2019re all human and there\u2019s a humanity out there which is really pleasing and nice to be a part of,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AMSTERDAM (AP) \u2014 Megan Worthy still recalls singing in a choir in the Australian capital, Canberra, as she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[199,3803,16143,3802,1126,1124,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-35251","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-amsterdam","8":"tag-amsterdam","9":"tag-ap-entertainment","10":"tag-ap-health","11":"tag-ap-lifestyle","12":"tag-ap-world-news","13":"tag-associated-press","14":"tag-netherlands"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116192937637631966","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}