The Effectiveness of Music Therapy System for the Elderly with Mild Cognitive Impairment

Every human being must experience aging eventually. The global population aged 60 years or over was 962 million in 2017. It is expected the number of seniors will be approximately 2.1 billion in 2050 (United Nation, 2017). With the increasing number of elderly, the number of senior adults with MCI (mild cognitive impairment) and early-stage dementia is rising as well. Aging is a worldwide problem and many countries are preparing hard to cope with it. Music therapy has proven to be an effective method to decrease the development of dementia as well as enhancing the behavior and cognitive abilities of seniors. A music therapy system was developed in this study for the elderly especially with MCI. The system is a kind of meaningful game for music therapy. Product designers and ergonomists have designed and redesigned the system. This music therapy system was chosen to be developed after conducting a survey. A specific instrument was selected and an usability test was conducted with a functional prototype. Before deciding the product design, an ergonomic pilot study was performed with a paper mock-up. Ten functional prototypes of the music therapy system were finally produced for a 10 week clinical test. The clinical test was performed in a dementia center and the results showed music therapy was effective for the elderly with MCI. The performance of the senior participants was also analyzed to examine their behavioral reactive abilities.