The Fredericks Lab
About Dr. Carolyn Fredericks and her lab Dr. Fredericks is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Yale School of Medicine and a clinical neurologist. The Fredericks Lab is part of Yale’s Clinical Neuroscience Imaging Center, where they study Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders using advanced brain imaging. Her work focuses on understanding how these diseases affect different brain networks, including both typical and less common forms of Alzheimer’s disease, with the goal of improving diagnosis and identifying new ways to support patients.
Why the study started The Musical Experience in the Lives of Dementia Patients (MELD) project is a collaboration with Dr. Samuel Mehr and The Music Lab, an international research group focused on how people perceive and experience sound and music. Both clinically and anecdotally, it has been observed that even when memory and language decline, musical abilities often remain surprisingly strong. Despite how common this experience is, we still don’t fully understand what aspects of music are maintained or how music can be used in everyday life to support well-being. This study aims to answer those questions and help translate them into practical tools for families.
About the MELD study The MELD study explores how music is experienced in people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. We want to better understand why music perception appears resilient in dementia and how music can be used to support quality of life for patients. The study has two parts:
Music Perception (in-person): Participants complete short, game-like activities that assess abilities like rhythm, pitch, and tonality during a one-hour session.
Music in Daily Life (remote): Caregivers complete brief smartphone surveys to track how music affects mood, sleep, and daily well-being over a two-week period.
Our goal is to better understand how music can be used as a simple, low-cost way to support both patients and caregivers.