Effects of music on autobiographical verbal narration in Alzheimer's disease

•Verbal narrations of AD patients held few empty words after music exposure.•They also involved better grammatical complexity and propositional density.•Music exposure improves verbal narrations in AD patients.

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting a beneficial effect of music exposure on autobiographical memory in patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Our paper was aimed at revealing the linguistic characteristics of these music-evoked autobiographical narrations. Eighteen AD patients and 18 healthy controls produced autobiographical narration in silence and after being exposed to their own-chosen music. Compared to the autobiographical narrations evoked in silence, music-evoked autobiographical narrations of AD patients included fewer empty words and were characterized by higher grammatical complexity and propositional density. These results provide support for the notion that music exposure may overcome neurolinguistic limitations in AD patients.