Category Archives: Music & Art
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5 Amazing Facts About Music and Memory
Originally posted on Getting Jazzed About Music
Music and Memory:
5 Awesome New Psychology Studies
Music has tremendous power over memory. Hearing an old song can take you back decades in the blink of an eye. Psychologists have been fascinated by this connection between music and memory.
Here are five recent psychology studies which demonstrate the intimate link between music and memory.
1. Singing aids language learning
The link between music and memory is so strong that it can help you learn a foreign language.
Research by Ludke et al. (2013) found that people trying to learn Hungarian, a notoriously difficult language, performed much better if they sang the Hungarian phrases rather than just saying them. The researchers think that the melody may provide an extra cue which helps embed the memory.
2. Music helps injured brain remember
People who have suffered traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), such as in a car accident, often have problems with memory.
Music is increasingly being tested as a way to help bring back forgotten autobiographical memories.
A recent study had participants who had suffered severe TBIs listening to number-one songs from their lifetimes to see what memories were evoked (Baird & Sampson, 2013).
The memories brought back were mostly of people or a period of their lives and were broadly similar to those evoked by control participants who did not have a TBI.
Compared with using a standardized interview–the Autobiographical Memory Interview–playing number-one hits to people who’d suffered TBIs was more effective in eliciting memories.
3. Widespread brain activation
One of the reasons music may be so powerful is that it activates such large areas of the brain.
A recent brain imaging study found that music activated the auditory, motor and limbic (emotional) regions (Alluri et al., 2013).
The study found that whether their participants were listening to the Beatles or Vivaldi, largely the same areas of the brain were active.
The motor areas process the rhythm, the auditory areas process the sound, while the limbic regions are associated with the emotions (Alluri et al., 2013).
4. Music can take you back two generations
Classic hits can easily take you back to your teens and twenties.
Most people have particularly strong memories of this time in their lives–psychologists have called it the ‘reminiscence bump’.
But, perhaps surprisingly, one study has shown that people also have mini reminiscence bumps for the music their parents listened to, and even for their grandparents’ music (Krumhansl & Zupnick, 2013).
The study’s lead author, Carol Lynne Krumhansl, explained:
“Music transmitted from generation to generation shapes autobiographical memories, preferences, and emotional responses, a phenomenon we call cascading ‘reminiscence bumps’.
“These new findings point to the impact of music in childhood and likely reflect the prevalence of music in the home environment.”
Another study has shown that we don’t even need to hear the tune for the memories to come flooding back–the words are enough (Cady et al., 2008).
For a whole generation, the words “Ice, ice baby”, and for another generation “…living in the gangsta’s paradise” are enough to take them back in time.
5. A unique musical hallucination
The power of music on people’s memory is sometimes frightening.
A recent study from Frontiers in Neurologyreported the case of a woman who, one night, suddenly began to hear music playing in her head, like a sort of internal, unstoppable jukebox (Vitorovic & Biller, 2013). The problem continued for months.
When she hummed the songs to her husband, he recognised some of them, but she herself didn’t know what they were or where they came from.
It seemed the songs were so deeply rooted in her memory that she wasn’t consciously aware she knew them. They only came to the surface during these night-time hallucinations.
She was treated with an anti-seizure medication and her symptoms improved a little.
This is the only known case of this kind of musical hallucination.
The Power of Music – Jack Leroy Tueller
Orphaned at age 5, this WWII veteran, went on to play first chair trumpet at BYU.
This is a remarkable story from Jack’s military experience.
Related articles
- How to evolve your own musical melodies (newscientist.com)
- Tunes without composers: music naturally evolves on DarwinTunes | Not Exactly Rocket Science (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
How Music Affects the Brain and How You Can Use It to Your Advantage
Reblogged from: Derren Brown Blog
“Music can often make or break a day. It can change your mood, amp you up for exercise, and help you recover from injury. But how does it work exactly, and how can you use it to your advantage?
Recently, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords used music therapy to help her learn to talk again. The still unproven theory revolves around the idea that music is represented in multiple parts of the brain and therefore accesses deeper pathways between neurons. Music then helps patients connect the stored knowledge of words through songs and helps create the new connections needed for speech. This same idea has been used for stroke victims in the past, and has been referred to as the Kenny Rogers Effect.
You don’t need to have suffer from brain damage to get the benefits though, lets take a look at how music affects the brain in a more casual sense, and how you can use it to enhance your day-to-day.
Recall Memories
You might remember reports back in the 1990s that said that studying while listening to Mozart increases the likelihood of performing well on a test, but that has been disproven in some studies, and in turn, studies have shown some music has a negative affect on fact retention if you’re studying numbers or lists. Still, performing music has been proven to increase memory and language skills, but for listeners, it’s better used as a means to recall memories. It has been shown in Alzheimer’s patients to help with memory recall, and even restore cognitive function. It works for Alzheimer’s patients in the same way it works in everyone else.
When you listen to music you know, it stimulates the hippocampus, which handles long-term storage in the brain. Doing so can also bring out relevant memories you made while listening to a particular song. So, even though the Mozart-effect has essentially been disproven, the idea that forming a new memory with music, and then using the same music again later to recall the memory still appears to be a sound idea. If you’re having trouble remembering something, you might have better luck if you play the same music you were listening to when you first made the thought.”
Related articles
- Simply activating a tiny number of neurons can conjure an entire memory (nextbigfuture.com)
- World Science Festival: Reawakening the Brain through Music (danapress.typepad.com)
- Ancient Music Therapy Revived in Turkish Hospital (greenprophet.com)
- On Music, Dopamine, and Making Sense of Sound (sharpbrains.com)
- Music, a significant invention. (wordscover.me)
- Can Art Heal? (aurablog.org)
- For patients, a little music therapy goes a long way (foxnews.com)
- Music therapy: a key to unlocking the diseased brain. (babyboomersandmore.com)
- Music Therapy Gaining In Treatment for Medical Conditions (fox2now.com)
- How does Music Therapy Affect Our Health (musicnmoods.wordpress.com)
- Thesis Chapter 1 – Music Therapy and the Grief Process (thinkingbookworm.typepad.com)
- Music: The Most Powerful Medicine in the World (metalstate.wordpress.com)
- Don’t Forget the Lyrics: Music and Memory (trishadm.wordpress.com)
- Critical Review – Is Music Therapy Useful in Stroke Rehabilitation? (thinkingbookworm.typepad.com)
- Game Helps Alzheimer’s Patients Form Memories (escapistmagazine.com)
- Music changes your brain: Listen to a soothing song after an argument? (westallen.typepad.com)
Lark E. Kirkwood
Elder Advocates 