1. Music and Cognition [week 2]

The lecture of Rebecca Shaefer explores the relationship between the brain, dementia, and music. The presenter outlines the neural and cognitive changes that occur with healthy aging and cognitive decline and the predictors of cognitive decline, such as age, medical health, genetics, and lifestyle factors. Music's potential role in promoting brain and cognitive reserve, as well as its impact on mood and emotion in individuals with dementia, is discussed. "Due to its characteristics integrating many different functional domains, music has great potential to activate and engage."

This is relevant for our use case as it is stated that engaging stimuli appear to be helpful for (neuro)rehabilitation, focussing on activation and communication for people with dementia. In this case the engaging stimuli is provided by the robot dog Miro, by interacting with the patient Truus and assisting and accompanying her with going for a walk. Besides that, Miro has also the functionality to react to music and perform dance-like movements. Miro is also capable of reacting to being pet by playing pleasant tones, this can have benefits in the sensory experience of Truus.