iPod donations help dementia patients
By Claudia Buck, Sacramento Bee
Got a used iPod? A regional concert promoter is collecting them for nursing homes and senior facilities, as part of the Music & Memory program that helps dementia and Alzheimer’s patients reconnect with their past by listening to favorite tunes.
“A lot of people have pushed their music onto their smartphone, and their iPods are in drawers somewhere,” said Forrest Reed, a volunteer fundraiser for Music & Memory. “They need to be recycled.”
The nonprofit Music & Memory, started in 2010 by New York social worker Dan Cohen, is based on research by UC Davis and other institutions showing the musical-memory part of the brain is one of the last to atrophy in Alzheimer’s patients.