Media/Arts

Alive Inside: A Look Inside Dementia

2014 Sundance Audience Award winner for best documentary, Alive Inside explores the power music has to awaken memories obscured by Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

The film follows Dan Cohen, a social worker, who decides on a whim to bring iPods to a nursing home. To his and the staff's surprise many residents with memory loss appear to "awaken" when they are able to listen to music from their past.

To investigate this phenomenon, Dan turns to renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks, MD, and the film follows them as they look at the way music functions inside our brains and in our lives.

Through conversations with Sacks, Bobby McFerrin, and others, difficult questions are raised about how we see aging and life itself.

— Source: Alive Inside