"Alive Inside" is an excellent documentary on Netflix: a study of dementia patients who are revitalized by listening to music of their younger years on iPods. While demented patients in nursing homes are given expensive drugs that do little or nothing to change their condition, the relatively inexpensive iPods, filled with music tailored to each patient, yields striking results. They sing, some of them dance, and memories surface even in those who minutes earlier could not remember the names of their own children.
I used to visit nursing homes and Alzheimers units when my friend Gary played the piano there. I remember how animated the patients' faces became as they listened to the tunes of the Twenties and Thirties, and how--occasionally--one of them would stand up and sway to the music. One woman always asked for "Some Enchanted Evening."
Likewise, in this documentary, we learn that music--like nothing else--stirs memories of enchanted evenings. Faces become happier and more expressive, bodies move to the rhythm, and the perpetual mental fog of dementia seems to lift.
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