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The name of this thread a bit cryptic and need to be explained, as the Alzheimer in my vocabulary means slightly different things then it is commonly recognized.  When I was 13 years old I read a book (I do not remember what it was) that was dedicated to the subject how people at different age perceive reality differently. There was a section in there that described how mind of old people get changed with age, with many examples, including those that described the changes with use of memories. It was illustrated that older people can very sharply recall in own memory long happened and almost forgotten events from on past and to re-live them with very high degree of vividness. This quality was attributed only to old people in that book.

As I progress with my age (I am 42 now) I am detecting that I am getting more stupid - this is a subject of my regular discussions with my friends. Sure, my functions are more experienced and more effective but it does not hide from myself the fact that my mind is not as flexible and is not as engaging as it use to be. One of many changes that I observe is that my memory is changing – I just begin to forget the things.  At the same time I realized that I begin to remember the things that I thought I do not remember and am able to experience them with a new strange colorfulness and realism.

I begun to observe it I would say 5-6 years back and at that time I came up with a comfortable for myself explanation. I decided that all humans from birth have Alzheimer’s, very slow progressive Alzheimer’s. With some people it begin to show up at 50, at 70s, some people die from different cause without letting the Alzheimer’s symptoms to be develop and some people have a fully symptomatic Alzheimer’s at 20 – they just do not know it. Do not criticize my theory - I am badly informed in medical field. However, as the result of my theory is that the word “Alzheimer’s” is how I personally label any changes in memory and cognitive functions of my life. 

What is particularly interested to me is something that I call “the Alzheimer’s triggers”. The Alzheimer’s triggers are another BS term that I invented and it describes the sensations that start the events of “unreasonable memorization”. The triggers might be everything: color or light, specific view, smell, taste, texture, logical pattern, intellectual or spiritual circumstance… anything but it also might be sound.

So, the “my version of Alzheimer’s” and Audio – how does it work? Let pretend that a specific sonic sensation was accountable for my mind being sent to a memory trip. Let pretend that listening a specific sequence of tones I got a sensation of me being 7 years old and experience a feeling that I had during my first day in elementary school. Can Audio, as the Alzheimer’s trigger, as an initiator of those experiences, modify the depth and the vividness of those memories or Audio just can modify the probability of  the triggering the memory trip itself? (Read the last sentence again – it is important)

The second huge question is that sound is the only know to me Alzheimer’s trigger that has subconscious Alzheimer’s aim. It is a bit tricky, try to read from here slowly, I will try to type slowly.  Any other Alzheimer’s triggers that I experienced were understood by me and I have very conscious explanation what and why my memories were referred to. Like smelling of a specific scent or experience some kind of visual deja vo sensation might arouse my stream of overly graphic memories,   but those memories are pointers to the things that I remember and know from my past. The Sonic Alzheimer’s triggers sometimes do the same BUT they also sometimes have pointers to the things I do not know cognitively. I feel that the aimed memories were the part of my experiences in past, I have all evidences of my mind that it relive my own past experiences, I feel my footprints  and my fingermarks all of over the memories, but I not always can identify when and how I got those memories. Furthermore, and here it becomes very interesting,  in some cases I do know that could NOT have some experiences in my past BUT I still re-experience some events is if I was the participant of them and I still have those fingerprints of my own participation.

In my view the major ingredient of the Alzheimer’s trigger in audio are Melody and Absolute Tone (you might want look up at my site my definition of Absolute Tone). The specific harmonic signature of tonal sequences in some cases are able to unlock the ancestry of own experiences from past and to fire up the Alzheimer’s triggers.  Could the purely Audio expressive methods be used in mitigation of the Alzheimer’s triggerabilety?  Could those changes of crossover slopes, plate voltages, diaphragms compression, biasing methods, core types,  grounding patterns , directivity of cables,  VTA of cartridges or type of rectification might be something that is more or less prone to make a playback  to have a higher probability of Alzheimer’s triggering.  Sure, the Alzheimer’s trips are not the purpose or objective of music reproduction. Still, my observations of the phenomena suggest that it is highly possible that a playback with higher rate of Alzheimer’s triggering has also a higher degree of musicality. It not necessary a direct link but I have seen that the wrong audio methods distract the Alzheimer’s triggering and musicality of playback at the same time, so not using the “wrong audio methods”  benefit both musicality AND Alzheimer’s triggering.

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