With the completion of the bass’s history last week we’ve taken a look out across the years at the origins and evolutions of some of the most popular instruments in the Western world. This week we’re going to take a step back from that subject, and refocus our attention on a different area of study. In the past we’ve spoken a bit in this blog about how music effects the human brain in a variety of ways. This week we’re going to focus on one specific way music interacts with the brain: memory. As we’ve discussed briefly before, music and memory are irrevocably intertwined, with one affecting the other, and vice versa, but the true depths of this connection have puzzled and fascinated psychologists for decades. This week we’ll take a look at some recent findings about that very connection, and maybe even some musical memory brain hacks for everyday!
Our first musical brain hack is something of a two for one! The connection between music and learning is just as well documented as the connection with memory, and is just as mysterious, but the unique fusion of memory, learning and music make for the perfect way to build new language skills. Learning a foreign language is difficult for most adults, especially learning and remembering an entirely new vocabulary. Recently it was discovered that pairing music with the new vocabulary of a foreign language lesson helped students retain more. The study specifically looked at a group of adult students learning Hungarian, a notoriously difficult language. The researchers had the class sing the phrases they were learning, rather than just reciting them in a normal speaking voice. Due to the heightened retention rate among the students, the researchers believe that the melody may provide your brain’s memory encoding process with a new cue to help embed the memory, essentially creating a new association. Which is probably why you can still remember the words to your favourite songs from high school.
And speaking of your old favourite songs, everyone knows that music acts like a time machine in your brain, easily transporting you back to your childhood with just a few notes, but the truth is even deeper than you think. Researchers call those little time hops we experience when we her our old favourites “reminiscence bumps,” and we all have them. But those “reminiscence bumps” go back farther back than you know; a recent study has shown that people have a sort of “mini ‘reminiscence bump’” for their parent’s music, and in some subjects, even their grandparent’s favourite music. The lead author on this particular study, Carl Lynne Krumhansl pointed out that the music we heard in our childhood helped to shape our autobiographical memories, our emotional responses to events, and our personal musical preferences, which then went on to do the same over and over as we grew and developed. He calls this process “cascading reminiscence bumps,” and it shows just how much of an impact music in the home environment can have on a developing child.
The musical time machine can even transcend physical injury. One of the unfortunate realities of surviving a traumatic brain injury (or TBI) is often difficulties with memory. In the past music has been used in Alzheimer’s therapy with a lot of success, and now researchers are trying to apply similar techniques to help those with TBIs recover forgotten autobiographical memories. A study in 2013 asked a number of participants who had suffered severe TBIs to listen to a selection of number one hits from across their lifetimes to see what, if any, memories were evoked. The study was a stunning success. The subjects with TBIs were able to recall memories about people or about the time of their lives when the song was popular. Each participant was given a simple standardized interview regarding their memories. When these interviews were compared with participants who did not listen to music it became clear that the music had a profound impact. The most remarkable thing about these recovered memories is that what was recalled and described was broadly similar in detail to the control group who did not have TBIs. This, perhaps, doesn’t result in an “everyday” brain hack, but for anyone with elderly or brain injured relatives, try playing some of their favourite music from their youth the next time you visit; you might learn something new about a time long before your birth.
But why does music have this strong connection to memory? What is it about the way music interacts with our brain that makes it so special? Well, these are questions psychology has been asking for a long time, and while most of our brain’s musical secrets remain hidden, every once in a while we catch a glimpse of something truly remarkable. Just a few years ago researchers at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland showed just how powerful the link between music and the brain really is. They discovered that not only does music activate a relatively large portion of the brain at once (the auditory, motor, and emotional regions at the same time), but different parts of the brain process different aspects of music, and the active regions are pretty much the same regardless of whether the music is Vivaldi, The Beatles, an Argentinian tango, or whatever. Using an fMRI and a predetermined playlist, these researches found that while the auditory region of your brain is processing the sound of the music, the motor cortex (the part of the brain responsible for your movement) is processing the rhythm, and your limbic regions (in charge of your emotions) are stimulated, making you feel something for the music, whether it’s elation or disgust. But sometimes the wires get crossed and something goes wrong.
This week I’d like to leave you with an interesting story of the powerful music-memory connection gone wrong. The scientific journal Frontiers in Neurology recently reported on the unique case of a woman in the United States. One night, in her early 60s, she started hearing music in her head, like a commercial free, DJ-less, radio station non-stop music block. Occurring only at night, these auditory hallucinations continues for months. Some of the songs she recognized, but many she did not know at all, yet her husband was able to recognize some when she hummed them to him. Researchers concluded that the songs were so deeply rooted in her past and memories that she wasn’t consciously aware that she even knew them; they only rose to the surface during these night-time episodes. Eventually she was treated with anti-seizure medication, which didn’t make the music go away, but it has taken the edge off. So far, this is the only known case of this sort of musical hallucination.
The seemingly full-brained connection between memory and music is a power thing indeed. You can use it to improve your own memory, learn new languages, and help others reconnect with memories thought long lost. But don’t underestimate the connection’s power, it can even pull up things you didn’t know you remembered, completely unbidden.
