The relationship between music and the brain is so interesting. Here are a few true stories.

I know a very musical family with three generations living in the same house. The oldest one, who had played violin for years, developed Alzheimer's. Sometimes someone else in the family would take out the violin for the old woman to play. They had to help her put it on her shoulder and under her chin because she would sometimes turn it upside down if she tried to do this herself. Once she held the violin and bow where they should be, she played the violin moderately well. It had a strong effect on her. For days afterward, her mood was better and she was more alert to things going on around her.

I once had the unpleasant experience of taking care of someone dear to me who had developed Alzheimer's at the relatively early age of 64. He had been a singer and music lover for most of his life. He had trouble sleeping because he got agitated at bedtime. One of the things I did for him was to play a CD of music to relax by, which   helped him calm down and get to sleep. However, he woke up briefly every night and asked, "What music is that?" when the CD was on the same track, Beethoven's Fur Elise, which he had known well. Every night I answered his question, and every night he asked it again.

One of my friends had a staph infection followed by a stroke in her junior year in college. She now says, "What a way to change your life." Shortly after the stroke, she lost the ability to speak. She could hear and understand her speech therapist perfectly well, and as far as she could tell, she was doing everything she needed to do to speak in return, but no sound came out of her. After a while, the therapaist sang "Mary Had A Little Lamb" to her, and she sang back. Ever since then she could talk. She says that she believes that something happened with a right brain / left brain crossover, and that's what enabled her to speak. Her stroke left her without fine motor control of the right side of her body. She was a music lover and she had played piano before her stroke. She trained herself to play piano again using only her left hand. She plays the melody with one finger and uses the other fingers to improvise cords. She now plays piano and organ in her church. I'm very proud of her.