Background:Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a complex condition that affects various aspects of a patient’s life. Music therapy may be considered a beneficial supplementary tool to traditional therapies, that not fully address the range of AD manifestations. Objective:The purpose of this systematic review is to investigate whether music therapy can have a positive impact on AD patients and on which symptoms. Methods:The main research databases employed have been PubMed and Cochrane, using the keywords “dementia”, “music therapy”, “Alzheimer”, “fMRI”, “music”, and “EEG”. Results:After removing duplicates and irrelevant studies, 23 were screened using set criteria, resulting in the final inclusion of 15 studies. The total number of participants included in these studies has been of 1,196 patients. For the fMRI analysis the search resulted in 28 studies on PubMed, two of which were included in the research; the total number of participants was of 124 individuals. The studies conducted with EEG were found using PubMed. The initial search resulted in 15 studies, but after a more accurate evaluation only 2 have been included in the analysis. Conclusions:Even though the data currently available is not sufficient to draw conclusions supported by robust statistical power, the impact of music therapy on AD neuropsychiatric symptoms deserves great interest. Further research should be ushered, possibly multicentric studies, led with neuroimaging and other recent techniques, which can eventually open views on the music role in improving the cognitive status in AD.

中文翻译：

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音乐疗法作为阿尔茨海默病相关痴呆患者的补充治疗：系统评价

背景：阿尔茨海默病（AD）是一种复杂的疾病，影响患者生活的各个方面。音乐疗法可能被认为是传统疗法的有益补充工具，但传统疗法并不能完全解决 AD 表现的范围。目的：本系统评价的目的是探讨音乐疗法是否可以对 AD 患者产生积极影响以及对哪些症状产生积极影响。方法：使用的主要研究数据库是PubMed和Cochrane，使用关键词“痴呆”、“音乐疗法”、“阿尔茨海默病”、“功能磁共振成像”、“音乐”和“脑电图”。结果：剔除重复和不相关的研究后，按照既定标准筛选出 23 项研究，最终纳入 15 项研究。这些研究的参与者总数为 1,196 名患者。对于 fMRI 分析，搜索结果是 PubMed 上的 28 项研究，其中两项被纳入该研究；参加者总数为124人。使用 EEG 进行的研究是使用 PubMed 发现的。最初的搜索产生了 15 项研究，但经过更准确的评估后，只有 2 项研究被纳入分析。结论：尽管目前可用的数据不足以得出强有力的统计能力支持的结论，但音乐疗法对 AD 神经精神症状的影响值得极大关注。应该开展进一步的研究，可能是多中心的研究，以神经影像学和其他最新技术为主导，最终可以打开关于音乐在改善 AD 认知状态中的作用的观点。