Feasibility and Acceptability of a Group Music Creativity Intervention for Adults with Varying Cognitive Function

ABSTRACTMaintaining healthy cognitive functioning and delaying cognitive decline in cognitively intact and cognitively impaired adults are major research initiatives for addressing dementia disease burden. Music interventions are promising, non-pharmaceutical treatment options for preserving cognitive function and psychological health in older adults with varying levels of cognitive function. While passive, music interventions have attracted considerable attention in the abnormal cognitive aging literature, active, music interventions such as music creativity are less well-studied. Among 58 older adults with different levels of cognitive function (cognitively healthy to mild cognitive impairment), we examined the feasibility and acceptability of Project CHROMA, a Stage 1 clinical trial developed to assess the effects of a novel, music creativity curriculum on various health outcomes. Music intervention participation (93%), overall study retention (78%), and intervention satisfaction (100%) rates were comparable to other similarly designed clinical trials. Exploratory analyses using mixed-level modeling tested the efficacy of the intervention on cognitive and psychological outcomes. Compared to those in the control condition, participants in the music condition showed some improvements in cognitive functioning and socioemotional well-being. Findings suggest that a 6-week music creativity clinical trial with several multi-modal health assessments can be feasibly implemented within a sample of varying cognitive ability.KEYWORDS: creativitymusicmild cognitive impairmentcognitionclinical trialquality of life AcknowledgmentsThe authors want to thank study coordinators - Kristi English, Yoully Kang, Vincent Lai, and Russell Ku - for their diligence in managing the project amidst changing public health circumstances.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2023.2272105Additional informationFundingThis work was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (1855491-38-C-19, 1892183-38-21) and the Center for Performing Arts Houston Methodist Hospital. Authors are also funded by the National Institute on Aging (Fagundes: 1R01AG062690, 1R01AG062690-02S1, 1R21AG061597-01A1; Wu-Chung: 1F31AG074648) and National Library of Medicine (Bonomo: T15LM007093).