Musical Museum: an integrative approach to emotional, intellectual and social stimulation for individuals with Alzheimer's disease and related disorders and their caregivers.

Authors

Jonathan Zhao, Melanie Zhang, Catherine Vidano, Clara Takarabe, Borna Bonakdarpour

Published in

Frontiers in neurology. Volume 17. Pages 1849901. Epub Jul 20, 2026.

Abstract

Musical Museum is a concert series that features live music and short music appreciation lectures in a socially safe setting designed for individuals with neurocognitive disorders (NcDs) and their caregivers. This program was created to provide emotional well-being, intellectual stimulation and social interaction. In this manuscript, we present our viable methodology, satisfaction ratings, implementation practicality, exploratory outcomes, and plans for future quantitative research on this program.
Participants, which included individuals with NcDs, their caregivers and other program supporters, experienced hourlong sessions with diverse music (both familiar and unfamiliar), enhanced by verbal introductions providing historical and musical context. Post-concert receptions encouraged social interaction. Anonymous surveys assessed satisfaction, pleasure, intellectual stimulation, likelihood to recommend and change in mood. Participants also provided open-ended feedback to evaluate logistics to determine practicality.
Musical Museum sessions require operational, logistical, and artistic components including venue setup, audiovisual support, communications, printed materials, staffing, and performance planning. Attendance data and expenses were tabulated to assess practicality and acceptability. In surveys, participants reported high satisfaction, pleasure, intellectual stimulation and likelihood to recommend. Participants' perceived mood significantly improved post-session, and they showed appreciation of the social benefits of the program in open-ended questions.
Over 11 completed sessions, implementation of Musical Museum proved to be practical in terms of operational, logistical, and artistic components. Largely positive survey feedback and consistent interest and attendance suggested acceptability to individuals with NcDs and their caregivers. Future directions include a controlled quantitative trial integrating psychosocial and neurophysiologic measures to examine efficacy and underlying mechanisms beyond participant-reported acceptability as well as assessment of the program's longitudinal impact on participant well-being.

PMID:
42548677
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 04 Aug 2026.

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