Effect of Musical Intervention Based on Piano Learning on Alzheimer's Patients in León (España).

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that affects different areas of the brain causing progressive changes in behavior, memory loss, decreased personal autonomy and various cognitive alterations. (Masters et al., NINDS, 2019; Alzheimer's Association, 2020)

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), currently around 50 million people suffer from some type of diagnosed dementia, of which 60-70% of them report some type or degree of EA. (Alzheimer's Association, 2020; WHO, 2020)

Not only is AD considered a worrying pathology today, but the forecast for medium and long term envisions a severe evolution that will reach 75 million cases in 2030 and 132 million in 2050. (Scheltens et al., 2016; MSCBS, 2019) Specifically in Spain there are more than 700,000 patients currently diagnosed and the forecast is that this number of people affected by AD will double in 2050. (MSCBS, 2019)

Since at the beginning of the s. XX the characteristics of AD were described for the first time (Mauer. K, 2006), scientific research has been, in its beginnings, aimed at alleviating the disease since a pharmacological point of view with modestly effective results (López, 2015) and effects secondary, sometimes unwanted. It therefore seems necessary to address the research and treatment of this disease from a non-pharmacological prism in which music has shown a high degree of efficiency with no adverse effects.

It is at this point that other alternative therapies such as music therapy take center stage. providing notable evidence of the brain activation that occurs, especially when the patient receives sound stimuli. (Peretz, 2005)