Audiences first encounter Henry hunched over in his wheelchair, head down, hands clasped firmly together, unresponsive to the world around him.
As soon as a pair of headphones are placed on his head, the 94-year-old dementia patient opens his eyes, sits up straight and begins swaying and humming along with the music. Henry speaks animatedly about his favorite band leader, Cab Calloway, and even begins to emulate the jazz artist’s style of scat singing — at one point launching into a rendition of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
The documentary uses Henry’s story, and those of other patients, to illustrate music’s power to reach parts of the brain that remain intact, even late in the onset of Alzheimer’s, and evoke memories.
[For more of this story, written by Dawn Chmielewski, go to http://recode.net/2014/07/19/alive-inside-film-documents-power-of-music-to-restore-memory-ipods-included/]
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