Music is a type of stimulation essential for people with dementia. Listen to the music that has a biographical connection with their lives provides moments of activation and reconnection with their environment, positive mood swings, and direct interactions with their family.

In this context, in 2018 we started a collaboration with Barcelona Beta Brain Research Center, the research center of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation, for the project Life Soundtrack. The project is based on the technology Banda Sonora Vital, a web-based service that creates custom playlists for music therapy sessions. Using a music history form, we obtain relevant information about the patient’s life, which includes biographical information, music education, preferences (e.g., favorite artists, songs, genres, mood, instrument), and memories associated with music.

Based on this data, our music recommendation algorithm combines direct search (for specific songs and most popular songs from specific artists), search for similarity, and indirect search based on most popular songs and similarities between users. The algorithm provides a list of songs or pieces of music that are potentially relevant to the patient, which are then evaluated and related to personal memories. In this way, we create playlists that can trigger these music-related memories.

Recently Pasqual Maragall Foundation has published a blog post with some of the songs from the playlists created in the project. You can read the article here: https://blog.fpmaragall.org/canciones-alzheimer

Banda Sonora Vital is a research project led by Emilia Gómez, Perfecto Herrera and Felipe Navarro.

http://bandasonoravital.upf.edu/