Get your tissues ready!

Henry Dryer, age 92, is one of seven patients profiled in a new American documentary called Alive Inside, which looks at the power of music to help people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

A clip of Dryer, who suffers from dementia, appears in an extraordinarily moving rough cut of the documentary that went up on YouTube this week. In the clip, which has been viewed well over 3 million times already, Dryer is largely mute and slumped over. He does not recognize his own daughter.

But when a caregiver places a pair headphones on him, he undergoes an astonishing transformation. His face, formerly slack and inert, lights up. His eyes beam, and he sways in his chair, keening along to the music of his youth.

The effect lasts even after the headphones are removed. “I’m crazy about music,” Dryer says. “I guess Cab Calloway was my number one band guy.”

Music “gives me the feeling of love”, Dryer says.

Author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, who has written extensively about the effects of music on the human brain, watches Dryer.

In some sense, Henry is restored to himself. He remembers who he is. He has reacquired his identity for a while through the power of music,

Sacks says in the Alive Inside clip.

Watch Henry’s amazing, tear jerking transformation, after the jump!

[Source: Guardian]