Combining music and life story to enhance participation in family interaction in semantic dementia: a longitudinal study of one family’s experience

Background: Semantic dementia is a rarer dementia, classified as a type of frontotemporal dementia and a variant of primary progressive aphasia. Studies examining conversation in this condition and interventions to enhance participation in family life present as gaps in the research literature.

Methods: Working with one family on a longitudinal basis, this study used conversation analysis and narrative analysis to provide a detailed assessment of communication . This information was used to design an individually tailored life story intervention to facilitate family interaction: a co-produced life story music DVD.

Results: This intervention offered the family a resource that allowed the person with semantic dementia to display areas of retained competence and enhanced participation in interaction in a way that was not typically present in everyday conversation.

Conclusions: It is argued that fostering greater opportunities for such in-the-moment connections is an important goal for intervention, particularly when language may be significantly compromised.