Personalising augmented soundscapes for supporting persons with dementia

The world population is aging and more and more people suffer from dementia, which makes remembering and orientation in time and space difficult. Moreover dementia has a strong negative effect on the quality of living of the people suffering from it, but also of their relatives. In this paper, we investigate if and how the playback of carefully chosen and recognizable sounds, such as music, a clock tower, or nature sounds, can help these people and have a positive effect on the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). The selection and playback of these sounds, augmenting the existing soundscape, is performed in a personalized manner, since sounds can elicit a different response in different people. Caregivers can provide feedback on the soundscape based on the resident's behavior and response to hearing the sounds. This allows a continuous adaptation of the soundscape. The soundscape system was tested with 19 people suffering from dementia and resident of 6 different nursing homes. Comparison of the nursing home environment before and after installation of the soundscape system showed that most residents (13/19) experienced this as an improvement of the sound environment.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the potential positive effects of playing carefully chosen and recognizable sounds on the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. The personalized selection and playback of sounds aim to improve the sound environment and can be continuously adjusted based on the residents' responses. The testing of the soundscape system with dementia patients showed that the majority of residents perceived it as an improvement in the sound environment.