The rhyme and reason of reading to dementia patients

[…] One of the most recent studies exploring exactly what wonders reading can do comes from an incredibly prestigious source – and has unearthed some astonishing and really quite heartening results . Research carried out by Oxford University has found that poetry is not just, as John Keats would put it, a Thing of Beauty, but also acts as a comforter, makes us feel better and significantly shapes our sense of self and identity; all factors which most certainly count for a lot. In particular it’s the poems that come from our childhood and early adulthood – and especially those we’ve read so much that we’ve committed them firmly to memory and can recite them off by heart – that offer the most consolation to us; and in this way and others, they contribute to making us who we are. Remarkable stuff indeed. The findings of the Oxford study have been backed up by very similar research from the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading which is looking into the relationship between poetry and memory and specifically, the ways that people remember poems that are personally significant to them. Head researcher Dr Clare Rathbone has identified that poetry that is so well known it could almost be part of our DNA is strongly centred in our individual ‘reminiscence bumps’ – the memories that each of us can most readily recall. Such memories are ingrained into our very beings, and such findings are testament to the ability of poetry to eke them out; most certainly they support the incredibly vital work The Reader Organisation does reading and sharing poems with dementia patients. […]