This is the genuinely touching moment a women with severe Alzheimer's recognises her husband after listening to their favourite song. Photo / Music For My Mind / YouTube
This is the genuinely touching moment a women with severe Alzheimer's recognises her husband after listening to their favourite song. Photo / Music For My Mind / YouTube
This is the genuinely touching moment a women with severe Alzheimer's recognises her husband after listening to their favourite song.
Huguette moved into a care home in 2014 as she began to slip into dementia and her illness worsened to a point where she could barely speak and was unableto recognise visitors
Even here husband, David, was a stranger to her.
But when the Belgium-raised woman was played music from her youth she began to laugh and smile.
Music from her childhood sparked something in her brain and brought her back into the room.
This is the genuinely touching moment a women with severe Alzheimer's recognises her husband after listening to their favourite song. Photo / Music For My Mind / YouTube
The music of Belgian singer Jacques Brel had the greatest effect on her.
In this genuinely touching footage, she listens to the song and begins to sing, the Daily Mail reported.
The song Ne Me Quitte Pas, by Brels, translates as Don't Leave Me.
Then she looks over at her husband. He gazes back at her. She then takes his head in her hands, grasping and kissing him.
He looks both happy and sad.
The footage was filmed by the charity Music For My Mind, which carried out a pilot study into how music can help those with dementia.
But when woman was played music from her youth she began to laugh and smile. Music from her childhood sparked something in her brain and brought her back into the room. Photo / YouTube
It is now crowdfunding to raise £100,000 for further research into making music part of the standard care.
Professor Keith McAdam, who founded Music For My Mind, said: "There is a lot of evidence that the music you know best is what you heard as a teenager, and all the emotions of your first love that stick with you. They stick in the part of the brain that appears to be least affected by Alzheimer's."
Professor McAdam, an adviser to the Royal College of Physicians, told the Evening Standard: "What we are trying to do is work with music-streaming organisations, and identify music from the 30s and 40s and so on.
"You play one song and then Spotify will say 'Anyone who likes that song will also like Vera Lynn' and so on."
