When Carol Howard’s juvenile Alzheimer’s disease worsened, she often failed to recognize her husband. But when a 1960s Simon & Garfunkel song was playing, marine biologist Howard, who died in 2019, could sing every word “without difficulty,” her husband said. increase.
This ability of music to evoke vivid memories is a well-known phenomenon to brain researchers. It can trigger intense memories of years past — often stronger than other senses. taste and odor — and trigger strong emotions from those previous experiences.
“Music can open doors to forgotten memories” Andrew BudsonChief of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, Associate Chief of Education, and Director of the Center for Translational Cognitive Neuroscience at the Department of Veterans Affairs Boston Medical System.
“Music not only takes you back in time, but it can act like an electrical impulse that activates and moves your brain,” he says. “We all have the familiar experience of going back home to visit high school and feeling the memories flooding in. Music can do the same. It provides an enabling aural and emotional environment.”
Scientists studying the powerful effects of music on the brain believe that with more knowledge, dementia other memory problems, anxiety, stress and depressionlearning disabilities, etc. illness of the bodychronic, etc. pain, cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
evidence Music also stimulates the secretion of neurotransmitters in the brain. dopaminea chemical messenger that plays a role in the brain’s reward/pleasure system. Reduce cortisol, the stress-producing hormone It also increases the secretion of oxytocin and plays a role in labor and childbirth, infant-parent bonding, trust and romantic attachment.
“Music activates different parts of the brain,” making music an especially versatile tool. Amy BelfiAssistant Professor of Psychological Science and Principal Investigator at the Missouri Institute of Science and Technology Music Cognitive Aesthetics Laboratory “We can use it to improve our mood, help us learn, and socially bond with other people. It’s like the soundtrack to our lives.” explains why it is so effective at becoming part of our identity and stimulating and retrieving memories.”
Some experts see a role for music in calming people with dementia, for example, as an alternative to sedatives or as a means of allowing patients to continue living at home.
Frank RussoA psychology professor at Toronto Metropolitan University says he believes this will eventually be possible.he is the chief science officer company It uses artificial intelligence to develop a music player that curates personalized playlists designed to guide patients from anxious to calm.
“One of the really difficult things for caregivers is anxiety and agitation,” says Russo, whose research focuses on the intersection of neuroscience and music. “A significant number of people end up in care homes that rely on sedatives and antipsychotics. Music has a real opportunity here.”
Music therapist Melissa Owens Virginia Commonwealth University Health, already seeing this in her work. “I’m still in awe of music’s ability to positively change behaviors, emotions, and even relationships between caregivers and their loved ones, even just for the duration of a particular song,” she says. It offers “ordinary moments where a lot of time seems lost”.
To understand how music affects the brain, experts look at: different types of memory involvement.
For example, when I play music, I don’t just listen, “procedural” a type of long-term memory “implicit memoryResearchers say it’s the unconscious ability to remember habits and routines you can do every day without thinking about it, like touch typing, riding a bike, or brushing your teeth.
this is, “episodeA type of long-term memory “explicit” Memories are conscious recollections and what the brain uses to remember. For example, shopping list items. (Both implicit and explicit memory are types of long-term memory. The first is unconscious and effortless, the second requires conscious effort to remember.)
Episodic memory originates in the hippocampal region of the brain, and with dementia, Budson says, “it moves first.”
“Alzheimer’s disease hits the hippocampus first and foremost,” he says, explaining why people with dementia can still remember and play lyrics through procedural memory. “It’s a completely different memory system,” he says.
People with healthy brainsEpisodic memory allows you to go back in time“When you hear music,” Budson says, at a specific past event or time period, the ability to sing and compose music is procedural memory, so you don’t have to deliberately think about what you’re doing. No. A recent well-known example is that of 96-year-old legendary singer Tony Bennett, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and was able to perform classic hits perfectly.
But Alzheimer’s patients can experience the musical “time-travel” episodic memory phenomenon even after the disease hits the hippocampus, if the episodic memory is more than two years old, he says. “They are ‘integrated,’ and once integrated, they become accessible even if the hippocampus is destroyed,” said Budson, a professor of neurology at Boston University.
“The consolidation process begins as soon as you go to bed the first night after the memory is formed and can take up to two years,” Budson explains. “When a memory is formed, it is not stored directly in the hippocampus. It is represented by a pattern of activity: thought is taking place.”
To understand this concept, think of memories as little balloons floating around different areas of your brain.
“When a new memory is formed, the hippocampus seems to be tying the balloon strings together, as if you were holding a helium balloon string in your hand,” he says. “If the hippocampus is destroyed, the balloon will detach and fly away, and the memory will be lost.”
However, when memories are consolidated, “the various balloons become directly linked to each other through heavy cords, and for this reason the hippocampus is no longer needed for the memory to remain intact. This is why patients can remember their childhood, but not what they had for lunch or who they met yesterday.”
The “time machine” effect of listening to music from someone’s youth is one that “everybody can relate to,” Russo says. “I was in high school in his 1980s, but today, when I hear Blondie and Depeche Mode songs, when I first started feeling it, it felt like being independent from my parents and being with my friends. Like an adult, really powerful.”
He adds: There are many opportunities to encrypt that memory. Deeply encoded music can unlock these “flash” memories. Listening to music helps us remember past events more vividly. ” Research shows that it is more effective than a familiar face or other stimulus.
Conducted by Belfi research Especially about this. In one small study, 30 participants listened to his 15-second excerpt of music that was popular in their youth, from age 15 to his 30s. After listening to the clip, I saw pictures of famous faces from the same era, including politicians and athletes. To avoid confusion, there are no musicians.
The scientists asked participants about each stimulus and asked them to describe an “autobiographical” memory inspired by the exposure. “Music evoked a much more detailed memory than faces,” she says. “From this study, we found that music tends to be associated with personal memories of life.”
In another small study, 39 young adults aged 18 to 34 years and 39 older adults aged 60 to 77 years kept diaries for 4 days and asked what music they heard and what they ate and cooked. I recorded my reaction to the food. I’ve seen it in supermarkets, I’ve seen it in baking programs.
“Music evoked more frequent autobiographical memories, increased the proportion of unconscious memories, and evoked memories rated as more personally significant compared to dietary cues,” she said. increase.
This should not surprise Falsone, lab manager at the Smithsonian Center for Environmental Studies. The ‘boy’ she danced in her arms is now 26 and has two more sons and a daughter.. All her children have heard her ‘wallflower’ tales. I’ve been there before.
“When I mention it, they all roll their eyes and say, ‘Yes, mom, I know. You like this song,'” she says.
