Custom songs for people living with Alzheimer's or dementia

Is this for Alzheimer's or for dementia?

Both, because they are not two separate things.

Dementia is the umbrella term for memory and thinking loss serious enough to interfere with daily life. Alzheimer's disease is its most common cause, accounting for 60% to 80% of dementia cases according to the Alzheimer's Association. Most families who come to us say the diagnosis is Alzheimer's.

The song is built the same way either way, including for vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, or a mixed or still-undetermined diagnosis. That is because it is built around the person's life rather than around the condition. Nothing in the form asks you to name a diagnosis.

Can music help someone with Alzheimer's or dementia?

The research on the category is encouraging, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not say.

A 2018 Cochrane systematic review, the most authoritative evidence available here, found that music-based therapeutic interventions for people with dementia in institutional care could reduce depressive symptoms and overall behavioural problems, and could improve emotional wellbeing and quality of life. Those studies largely tested interventions delivered by trained therapists, so they support the category rather than any one product.

SoundCard.ai is a personalized music engagement tool. It is not music therapy and not a medical treatment, and we make no claim that it treats dementia.

Why the music of their youth

Musical memory often outlasts other memory, and familiar music is one of the strongest cues for recalling a life.

Jacobsen and colleagues found that the brain regions supporting long-term musical memory are among the last to be affected in Alzheimer's disease, which helps explain why someone who has lost words can still find a melody. Janata showed that familiar music activates the medial prefrontal cortex alongside autobiographical memories, so a song can carry a person back to a specific time rather than simply sounding pleasant.

The songs someone knew roughly between the ages of 10 and 25 tend to be encoded most strongly. That window is where we start, which is why the first thing we ask for is the music they loved when they were young.

What a personalized song can give a person with Alzheimer's

Recognition, identity, and a way to connect when ordinary conversation has become hard.

Alzheimer's and the other dementias take language and recent memory long before they take the feeling of who someone is. A song that names their spouse, the town they grew up in, the work they were proud of, and the dog that sits by their chair is not only music. It is a reminder of a whole life, delivered in the form the brain holds onto longest.

That matters most in the moments where words fail. Families and care staff often reach for music at exactly these points: during sundowning in the late afternoon, in the awkward middle of a visit when nobody knows what to say, on a difficult morning, or in the quiet of end-of-life care. Music-based interventions have been studied for their effect on mood and behaviour in dementia, and the Cochrane review above is the fairest summary of what that evidence supports.

A song is also something a family can do together. It gets played at the bedside, passed around the group chat, put on in the car on the way to a visit, kept long afterward. For many families that lasting recording becomes the point as much as any single moment of recognition.

Where families use it

• At home. On a phone or a speaker, part of the afternoon routine.
• In memory care and assisted living. Something staff can play that belongs to that resident alone.
• During visits. A way in when conversation stalls, especially for grandchildren who find visits hard.
• From far away. When family cannot be in the room, the song can be.
• In hospice and after. Families keep the recording; some ask for it at the service.

How is this different from a playlist?

A playlist plays records that already exist. We make a new song about them.

Personalized playlist programs, most visibly Music & Memory, are the closest widely used comparison and the reason the idea is familiar in care communities. This takes the same principle one step further: instead of finding a recording from their era, we write and produce an original song in that era's sound, with their own life in the lyrics.

• Their sound. The genre, instruments, and language of the music they grew up on.
• Their people. The name they answer to, their spouse, their children and grandchildren.
• Their places. The hometown, the country, the street, the church.
• Their days. The work they did, the kitchen, the garden, the shop, the routines.
• Their words. The phrases they always say, that the family can finish for them.
• What to leave out. Anything that upsets them stays out of the song.

How it works

1. Tell us about them. The form asks for their era and music, their people and places, and anything to avoid.
2. We write and produce the song, in the style and language of the music they grew up with.
3. It arrives by email within 24 hours, ready to play on any phone, tablet, or speaker.

Families often start with one song and add more over time, building a small collection that belongs only to that person. It may help during sundowning, family visits, or quiet hours.

Questions families ask

SoundCard.ai Memory Care Music is a personalized music engagement tool for dementia care. It is not music therapy and not a medical treatment. Always work with your loved one's doctor and care team. It does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition. Research cited on this page describes the category of music-based interventions and is not a claim about outcomes from this product.