Short-Term Improvement on a Visual-Spatial Task After Music Listening in Alzheimer's Disease

A recent study (Johnson et al., 1998) reported an improvement on a visual-spatial task after listening to an excerpt of a Mozart sonata in one subject with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The aim of the present study was to replicate this finding in a larger group. Seventeen mildly demented subjects diagnosed with AD were asked to solve a visual-spatial task before and after a control (i.e., 10 minutes of silence) and experimental (i.e., 10 minutes of a Mozart piano sonata) condition on different days. When comparing the change in scores from baseline after each condition, subjects showed a significant improvement in scores on the visual-spatial task after the music listening (p = 0.02) but not the silence (p = 0.51) condition. This finding provides further support that a short-term improvement on a visual-spatial task can be observed in subjects with AD and may reflect underlying behavioral plasticity.