Transcendental Tunes: Connecting Alzheimer’s Patients with their Care Partners through Music

The Transcendental Tunes design is a project that aims to combine RFID technology with old school stereo equipment and digital music to serve as a memory trigger and emotional aid for Alzheimer’s patients, improving communication with their care partners. This concept works on the premise that patients affected by the disease don’t actually lose their memories, but are just unable to reach them, and thus takes advantage of the observation that the Medial Prefrontal Cortex, the part of the brain responsible for familiar music, memories, and emotion, is one of the last areas to be affected over the course of the disease. With this system, they will be able to use music as a means of accessing those memories. When the patient’s care partner chooses a song that is stored in the metallic orb, it can be placed on top of the stereo in order to have that song played back, making it easy to select the desired song.