Aging cannot be avoided, if we are meant to get there. The older we get, the more likely it is that our mental functions will gradually decline, including dementia. Even geniuses such as the French composer Maurice Ravel, whose excerpt from the opera The Child and the Spells is a part of the broadcast, did not escape the then-unknown disease of gradual loss of mental functions. Dementia is a syndrome, a set of signs and symptoms caused by a usually chronic and progressive brain disease. Many cognitive functions are affected more than would be expected from ageing alone. It affects the brain's higher functions, including memory, cognition, orientation, calculation, speech, judgement and the ability to learn. Consciousness is not affected. Dementia often results in impaired emotional control, behaviour and motivation. However, these changes may occur before the impairment of mental functions.
Our guest, Mrs. Mihaela Kavčič, and our host, head physician Igor M. Ravnik, will discuss how we can use music to enrich our old age and thus benefit our physical and mental health. Serious researchers are studying whether and how music, such as singing, can slow down the ageing process of the brain and, in early-stage patients, slow down the progression of dementia.
