Music is known to be therapeutic, but can it boost your memory? Well, it can. A new study found that listening to music can sharpen the brain and also has the potential to improve the lives of people with neurodegenerative disorders. A new study by UCLA neuroscientists found music’s therapeutic potential for Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, and PTSD. The findings of the study are published in the Journal of Neuroscience.Music’s impact on the brain
We all know that listening to music while doing certain chores makes the activity more enjoyable. The new study found that listening to music after an experience or activity can make it more memorable if you have the optimal emotional response while listening to it.“We found that whether music was negative or positive, or whether it was familiar, didn’t have as much of an influence on memory as the emotional response people felt while listening to it. There was an optimal level of emotional response that aided in remembering the details of an experience. Too much or too little emotional response had to opposite effect – worse memory for details, but better memory for the gist of an experience,” corresponding author and UCLA integrative biology and physiology professor Stephanie Leal said, in a statement. Scientists have been trying to understand the link between music, emotions, and memory so that they could tackle learning and problems involving memory, such as Alzheimer’s disease and PTSD. There is no doubt that music could become a powerful, noninvasive, and even pleasant therapeutic tool.The study
To understand the link between music and memory, the researchers studied volunteers who were given images of household objects, such as telephones, laptops, and oranges. After observing about 100 images, the participants listened to classical music for 10 minutes. When the emotional arousal levels dropped back down to baseline, they were given tests to see if they had a memory of the objects shown to them. They were shown pictures that were either identical to the images they had seen, ones that were very similar but slightly different, or ones they hadn’t seen at all. Participants had to identify if the images were exactly the same, new, or different in any way. They were also asked about their familiarity with the music and how they felt while listening to it.The findings
Looking at the whole scenario, music did not improve participants’ memory of the objects; however, some showed significant improvement. especially for recognizing that an object wasn’t quite the same during the memory test, but similar. The researcher found that individuals with improved memory had experienced a moderate level of emotional arousal, so not too much or too little, whether listening to classical music that sounded uplifting or gloomy, or familiar or unfamiliar. Those who felt strong emotions in either direction, in fact, tended to have the most blurry recall of the objects and remembered the gist of the images better.The takeaway
The researchers noted that memory is often a balance between remembering the gist versus the details. Gist-based memory helps us recall the overall thing while letting minor details fade, which is useful since we can’t remember everything. Detail-based memory, on the other hand, helps to retain the specific information when needed.“We used a task designed to tap into the difference between gist- and detail-based memory. Music helped with detail-based memory but only when the level of emotional arousal was just right for that person,” Leal said. This study found that listening to music immediately after an experience can alter what we remember. For instance. Tuning to moderately arousing music after studying might help you remember the detailed information you need for a test the next day. But if you listen to music that provokes strong emotions immediately after studying, it may have the opposite effect. The balance is perhaps the key here. “Music has the ability to influence a part of your brain called the hippocampus, which is essential for turning experiences into memories. We think it should be possible to tap into that in a selective way to boost or impair memory depending on the therapeutic goals,” Leal added.Music could help people remember details of experiences, keep their minds sharp as they age, which may be helpful for those in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. In anxiety and PTSD, music that strengthens gist-based memory might help smooth out experiences that trigger a trauma response.
“In my lab, we’re trying to detect changes in the brain and cognition early. Music is noninvasive, low-cost, and easy to personalize, and by learning more about the mechanisms that connect it to memory, we can develop treatments and interventions to prevent the disease from progressing. If the federal government reduces funding for Alzheimer’s research, the chances that we’ll be able to develop this line of research into inexpensive yet effective treatments are very low, as developing personalized treatments requires lots of research participants to capture individual needs,” Leal said.
