Music evokes memories, with favourite and famed songs allowing us to relive treasured moments.

Social worker Dan Cohen was inspired to harness this remarkable power to help patients suffering from dementia — with impressive results.

He decided to give the gift of music to victims and watched it help them combat memory loss, with the work captured on film in the documentary Alive Inside.

Mr Cohen will speak and answer questions at a screening of the award-winning movie in Bermuda on Saturday as part of Dementia Awareness Week, organised by local charity Action on Alzheimer’s and Dementia (AAD).

“Even though those with more advanced dementia can no longer recognise their own family or even communicate, they will often respond — even awaken — to music that holds personal meaning from their youth,” he said.

“Even though their short-term memory is compromised, their emotional system is still pretty much intact — and it’s our emotional system that loves our music.

“It is important to note that when people are enjoying themselves they do not become agitated, which is a big challenge to care partners.

“It often results in prescribing harmful anti-psychotic medications that are not good for elders who have no psychiatric diagnosis. We are substituting the music for these meds 50 percent of the time.”

Mr Cohen was inspired to make the documentary because “even though I was seeing these extraordinary responses to the music, when I’d tell people about it, their response was basically, ‘how nice that you are bringing the old people music’.”

“They just didn’t get it,” he added. “Maybe because we are all our own experts on music. I had to find a way to capture a few minutes on film of what I was seeing so people could see for themselves.

“What started off as a one-day job for the filmmaker [Michael Rossato-Bennett] turned into him following me for three years to make this documentary.”

Alive Inside follows Mr Cohen’s work with his non-profit group Music and Memory, which promotes “the use of personalised music with nursing homes, community services and families, so that every person with some form of dementia who might benefit has access”.

The documentary won the 2014 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for US Documentary — an accolade that left Mr Cohen “stunned”.

“I’m a social worker who also spent a career in technology firms,” he said. “In 2006 I heard a journalist talk about how everyone has iPods. Well, young people may, and many of us adults, but I thought that was certainly not true for nursing homes.

“I Googled ‘iPods’ and ‘nursing homes’ — in the US, with 16,000 nursing homes, I couldn’t find one using iPods for their residents. So I called a nursing home near my home and said, ‘I know that music is already your number one recreational activity, but can we see if there is any added value if we were to totally individualise the music?’ It was an instant hit.”

Mr Cohen advises those who know a dementia patient to create a personalised playlist for them. You can download ‘How to Create a Personalized Playlist for your Loved One’ from the musicandmemory.org website.

“If they are in a care home, encourage the home to become Music and Memory certified so that they maximise the outcomes generated from this approach,” he said. “We have 700 care homes, hospices, home-care programmes and hospitals in 45 states, seven Canadian provinces and six other countries that have integrated this approach.”

Alive Inside will be screened at BUEI’s Tradewinds Theatre from 5pm on Saturday and tickets cost $20.

Mr Cohen will speak and answer questions after the movie.

For tickets or for more information about Alzheimer’s and dementia, e-mail AAD at alzbermuda@yahoo.com or call 707-0600.