They sing to remember: The power of memory choirs

The performers enter Sundin Music Hall arm in arm, lavender scarves draped around their pressed white shirts. It’s nearly showtime, but the eager singers—a constellation of community members, some young but many old and bespectacled with gray hair—find a few minutes to hug and chat, clinging tightly to their binders of music. These are the 68 members of the Giving Voice St. Paul Chorus, ready for their spring concert.

They’ve been preparing every Tuesday for the past four months, learning to belt out favorites like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” After a final hour-long run-through, the choir files backstage and the auditorium seats fill with hundreds of onlookers. Young children follow behind adults, their eyes scanning the stage for the grandparent they have come to see perform.

Those attending their first Giving Voice concert may not know what to expect—it is a dementia-friendly choir, meaning many of the participants have some form of dementia and are joined onstage by caregivers and loved ones.

Giving Voice, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people in all stages of memory loss, was founded in 2014 with an initial chorus of 35 members. There are now more than 70 “memory choirs” throughout the world that use Giving Voice’s model as the foundation for their programs—and a slew of similar dementia-friendly choirs and bands, including Music Mends Minds,  AlzheimHER’s Chorus, and The Unforgettables Chorus.

The premise of these memory choirs is simple but powerful: Making music is not just a feel-good community activity; it’s also a powerful weapon to help preserve memories and enhance brain function.

Over 55 million people worldwide are believed to be living with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. Nearly 10 million new cases are diagnosed globally each year. In 2022, Alzheimer’s disease was the sixth leading cause of death among people 65 and older in the United States. There is no cure, and some current treatments for the disease may have potentially serious side effects. So families are often left looking for new ways to cherish their time together and try to slow the disease’s progression.  

Some are finding hope in song.

“What we thought was an opportunity for a little music therapy and social time turned out to be one of the most powerful ways to create well-being for an incredibly marginalized group,” says Eyleen Braaten, Giving Voice’s executive director, whose father, Bruce Burnside, belongs to a Giving Voice chorus in Minnesota. Braaten says Giving Voice is launching at least 15 more choruses in the next year.

The success of memory choirs like Giving Voice has begun to attract attention and raise serious scientific questions about whether music therapy can rewire the brain in addition to improving mood and fostering community. And with cases of dementia expected to increase in the coming decades, researchers are racing to understand the mechanisms that might make music one of our most powerful tools in the fight to slow cognitive decline.

The link between singing and memory is one that intrigues Borna Bonakdarpour, a behavioral neurologist at the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. A lifelong musician who witnessed the power of music awaken his own grandmother when she was suffering from dementia, Bonakdarpour is on a quest to show that social singing can help address some of the underlying causes of the disease, such as decreased mental stimulation, isolation, and inactivity.

Bonakdarpour and his team have been partnering with a Chicago-based choir called Good Memories, which is composed of singers with early-stage dementia, their caregivers, and volunteers. In a study funded by the choir’s parent organization, Sounds Good Choir, the researchers assessed the well-being of older singers, with and without memory loss, who were rehearsing virtually each week for an online concert and participating in an online sing-along program during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings, published in April 2025 in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, revealed that singers self-reported mostly positive responses to the activities, noting that their emotional and intellectual well-being was bolstered.  

“Rehearsing over weeks and weeks is helpful to the singers intellectually,” Bonakdarpour says. “But the social interactions they have are also very important in creating a shared experience that reduces feelings of isolation.”

Earlier this year, Bonakdarpour’s team partnered with researchers at the University of Houston and used mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI), or caps fitted with electrode cables, to capture in real time the brain activity of singers in the Good Memories choir as they harmonized to classics like “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” and “Happy Trails.” The researchers are waiting on additional funding to analyze the data. Bonakdarpour hopes to eventually track changes in participants’ brains before, during, and after 15 weeks of choir rehearsals.

The uplifting power of choral singing was something that Sounds Good Choir co-founders Jonathan and Sandy Siegel Miller noticed early on. “One of our volunteers came to us and said, ‘I knew I was having some cognitive impairment. I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on or what to do,’” Jonathan says. “She said after a year with the choir, it was like she had rehabilitated herself cognitively.” Similar stories from other members prompted the couple’s collaboration with Bonakdarpour: “We wanted to find out if there was a way to move from anecdotes to something more rigorous.”

In fact, research has shown that music can help resurface old memories, increase neuroplasticity, and boost brain function, in addition to fostering community and helping regulate emotion. Participation in musical programs like choirs can help maintain the function of existing neural pathways and even forge new ones. Multiple studies have found that musical training can enhance the structural integrity of white matter ⁠in the brain, which allows information to be transmitted more efficiently. And there are indications that the brain’s musical centers are particularly insulated from the ravages of dementia.

That’s because the memories we make while listening to music form in a different part of the brain than other types of memories—and they may be stickier. In a 2015 study, researchers used neuroimaging technology to identify brain regions that process long-term musical memories and explore how the progression of Alzheimer’s disease impacts them. Their research suggests that these regions—the caudal anterior cingulate gyrus and the ventral pre-supplementary motor area, to be exact—stay intact long after dementia affects classic memory areas like the temporal lobes. That may explain why well-known songs can sometimes be recalled by individuals in the later stages of Alzheimer’s disease, explains Jörn Jacobsen, the study’s lead author and research scientist at an artificial intelligence start-up.

Scientists also suspect that music from our early years can so easily trigger old memories because this period of time is associated with many important milestones. “For someone with memory loss, the strong emotional connections [of familiar music] arouse brain areas related to long-term memory,” says Concetta M. Tomaino, executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurological Function, in Mount Vernon, New York. In some cases, the emotions associated with familiar music are strong enough to jog long-term memories.

Singing, in particular, is a complex activity and engages a larger portion of the brain compared to speaking. A 2025 review of 23 papers suggests that because singing engages multiple systems in our brain—we must first hear music, remember the lyrics, and then repeat them back—we see benefits in executive function, episodic memory, and verbal fluency.

For those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or aphasia, a disorder that can affect verbal communication, singing can help them find their voice again. In the wake of a 2011 assassination attempt that rendered her unable to speak, former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords used melodic intonation therapy and regained her ability to communicate through song, learning to first sing words before speaking them. Music, in these cases, can act as a sort of bridge. Bonakdarpour has seen this firsthand: “People with dementia may not talk much,” he says, “but when they come to choir rehearsals, they kind of wake up.”  

Music’s cognitive superpowers may extend to other types of brain dysfunction and injury. Researchers are exploring how choirs can improve the lives of stroke victims, parents experiencing postpartum depression, and patients with Parkinson’s disease. Members of the ParkinSonics, a choral group for Parkinson’s patients run by Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Center for Music and Medicine, for instance, reported that weekly choir practice not only enhanced some aspects of their quality of life but also improved their speaking volume.

For his part, Bonakdarpour hopes to advance the practice of social prescribing, which connects patients to nonclinical services in the community—like choirs—to improve their health and quality of life. “Some people believe we can fix things with medication alone, but the brain is more complicated than that,” he says. “If our research shows we can control some of the symptoms [of dementia] with non-pharmacological interventions, like music, then wouldn’t that be great?” 

Back at Sundin Music Hall, the lights dim and the concert begins. Artistic director J. David Moore waves the choir members to rise, “in body or spirit” and together, along with a live piano accompaniment, they sing the first lines of Patsy Cline’s “You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want to Do It).” 

Mike Gair and his daughter, Andrea, stand side by side in the second row, holding their binders beneath their chins. Before joining Giving Voice, Gair’s only experience singing was in an all-boys Catholic boarding school chorus. Certainly he wasn’t crooning during his 42 years as a landscape architect working on hundreds of developments in and around Minnesota.  

When he retired in 2022, he began the arduous process of cataloging his architectural work. But what started as a productive pastime turned urgent after he was diagnosed with early-stage dementia one year later. Now Gair is racing against the clock to chronicle his past before he no longer remembers it. 

Between daily walks, Gair continues to spend up to seven hours a day, five or six days a week, in the crowded basement of his small, charming Tudor-style house in the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis, organizing papers from his personal and work life into binders. One of the few days each week he isn’t in his basement workspace is Tuesday, when he attends choir rehearsals with his daughter.

Andrea discovered Giving Voice in the months following her father’s diagnosis. After gently prodding her reluctant dad, the pair signed on for the 2023 season. She describes him as “being on a high” following rehearsals, alert and full of energy. Each week as they drive home, he thanks her over and over for getting him involved in the choir. 

On stage in Sundin Music Hall, Gair and Andrea sway onstage, shoulders back, lost in the songs and the experience.

Over the 90-minute performance, the choir moves through 12 songs, from the playful “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to ’80s Celt-rock favorite “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers. Some singers come to the front to share stories about their connections to the tracks. Others, who appeared apathetic in rehearsals, perk up as they trumpet their verses alongside more active counterparts. An elementary-age girl in the audience tugs her father’s shirtsleeve, pointing to the stage in excitement. People wipe back tears as they watch normally nonverbal family members sing along with pride and precision.

Once the concert is in full swing, it’s nearly impossible to detect which singers have dementia and which are friends or caregivers. And it hardly matters. Both groups are benefiting from the shared experience of learning and expressing music together.  

Research has shown that choral participation helps calm anxious behavior and strengthens relationships between patients and their caregivers. “The choir gives them a break, a chance to meet others who understand their experience and time to relax and enjoy themselves,” says Debra Sheets, a professor emerita at the University of Victoria’s School of Nursing in Canada and founder of the Voices in Motion multigenerational choir.

Choir member Jayne Lindesmith says the Giving Voice community has become an important support system for her and her mom, Karen Lindesmith. She finds singing in everyday life helps Karen, who’s experiencing the later stages of dementia, better understand language and complete simple tasks without the assistance she would otherwise need. “When we have to go somewhere, I sing the steps,” Jayne says, laughing as she belts out a high-pitched song: “Put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking across the floor!”

There remains much to learn about the power of song and socialization when it comes to dementia care—not least about how it helps create happiness in an often difficult moment in time. “This is not like a cancer that will kill you in two years. This is a stage in our lives,” Bonakdarpour acknowledges. “As we are living longer and longer, most of us are doomed to have memory problems.” When that happens, he says, it is important to seek out communities that understand, assist, and advocate for our loved ones; communities that recognize a person is so much more than their diagnosis.

Often, people living with dementia are defined by their condition, explains Giving Voice’s Braaten. “We invite them to see beyond that,” she says. “Because when they do, they’ll see joy, creativity, connection, and community. And nothing reveals that more beautifully than music.” 

This article is part of Your Memory, Rewired, a National Geographic exploration into the fuzzy, fascinating frontiers of memory science—including advice on how to make your own memory more powerful. Learn more.