Twelve residents of an Alzheimer's Special Care Unit in a mid-Missouri skilled nursing facility were their own controls in this one group repeated measures design. Participation involved listening to music after going to bed and wearing a monitoring bracelet (Actigraph accelerometer) to measure the length of the sleep latency period and restlessness. Current nursing home medical records were reviewed to identify the use of sedating medications during the course of the project. The duration of the project was 28 consecutive nights: 7 nights of no music, 7 nights of soft classical music, 7 nights of no music, and 7 nights of soft contemporary music with nature sounds. Participants were put to bed at their usual times by their usual caregivers who also applied the monitoring bracelets and turned on the music.

Data analysis is currently underway with calculation and comparison mean sleep latency, mean restlessness as quantified by actigraphy, and mean number of sedating doses of medications. The findings of this project will be used part of the preliminary work for a proposal to fund a larger version of this project