In the clip below, watch as Henry, a man suffering from Alzheimer’s and resident at the Cobble Hill Health Center for 10 years, rapidly “awakens” when he hears songs that he has a strong emotional connection to from his life before the nursing home.
Doctors had described him as being “inert, maybe depressed, unresponsive and almost unalive,” but as you will see in the video, the music that plays in his ears brings him to life and helps him become more lucid and even able to answer questions, something the condition had rendered him unable to do.
As the music plays, he taps his feet, sways and hums along in a manner his doctors and children never thought possible again. The clip is from a documentary called Alive Inside: The Story of Music and Memory, directed by Michael Rossato-Bennett and Jeff Pinilla.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKDXuCE7LeQ&w=500&h=300]
