People around the world have been taking to their balconies and windows to sing to each other, applaud or show gratitude since the pandemic started.
A meta-analysis study published in May in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that singing can trigger otherwise inaccessible memories for people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
Be careful not to shout Photo: Pixabay
Listen to the full interview here
Arizona State University musicology professor Kay Norton, who studies the healing power of music, tells Jim Mora that there are studies on both the physiological and behavioural effects of music.
"There's nothing that can fix dementia, at least not right now, we don't know how to cure it.
"But one of the cool things about singing is when we sing, we record activities in the brain in a lot of different places - linguistic, feeling, and physical - because they're recorded in so many places, the fog of dementia, at least until it becomes severe, can be put to the side sometimes.
"You'll see the joy come to their face, they might not be able to say the name of the song, but in some cases they can sing all of it because it's been memorised so long ago."
Keeping the brain active and agile in this way can keep the memory sharper, she says.
"I think about the unfortunate case of Tony Bennett, the great singer who is suffering from dementia right now and who Lady Gaga is collaborating on at the very end of his battle.
"Then when somebody plays the introduction to one of his old tunes, he stands up and with help walks out, and sings all the words when he probably couldn't have strung together a sentence before."
Norton also remembers how music helped her own mother, who suffered a stroke that left the right side of her body impaired.
"She was really distressed. Then I remembered my music training and some of the things I read."
So knowing her mother was a church lady, she began to sing a hymn that would help her move, as the doctors had advised her to do.
"I stood up and she was facing me and I held her hands ... and I moved my foot and she mimicked me, and so that happens with people who have lost temporarily their capacity to walk and also that's used a lot with Parkinson's patients to help them regain their gait.
"The marvellous thing about our brains is that it's plastic, it will rebuild, it will find new neural pathways and that's exactly what happened with my mother."
It also brings an improved quality of life for patients suffering from mental ailments, she says.
"I can't tell you the joy my mother felt, because my mother was this really smart kid all her whole life and she couldn't ask a single question in those first days in the hospital.
"But also she couldn't even finish a sentence, she couldn't say my name, and at one point I said let's sing something together, and I said you know the 'abc' song and she sang it with me top to bottom.
"She was so proud of herself and I said let's keep going, let's sing Amazing Grace or Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
"The emotional boost that she got and that I've seen other people get, showing proof that their brains are not dead, they're still in there, is just tremendous."
Even singing alone at home or in the shower or while driving is a good opportunity to get those feel good chemicals - dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin - going and change the subject in your brain, she says.
"Singing in a group functions like playing a sport. Singing alone, literally, take it like a pill. If I am dragging and feeling like my life isn't going very well, I'll just put on some music I love and sing.
"I am renewed both physically and emotionally.
"The deeper you breathe, the more you smile, the more you think about those words, and you allow your brain to go back to those times when you were cruising around in your 1968 Mustang, the more joy you can bring into your life."
If you get deep into a song and elevate your heart rate, breathe deeper, and oxygenate your blood, you'll release the feel-good hormones, she says.
"All that physical activity brings a sense of life back into the body."