Music has the power to enhance and reshape memories

Music can enhance our ability to learn new information and positively alter existing memories, according to two recent studies. The findings could inform music-based interventions for conditions such as PTSD, depression and dementia.

Music has been part of the human experience for centuries, influencing our emotions and memories. We often associate certain music with a significant event or time. Think of the music used in films, at a wedding, or to help us get over a relationship breakup. We also use music as an accompaniment to important tasks like working, driving, and studying.

Two recently published studies, led by Yiren Ren, a PhD student at Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology, explored the concepts of music as an aid to learning and its ability to reshape old memories.

“One paper looks at how music changes the quality of your memory when you’re first forming it – it’s about learning,” said Thackery Brown, a cognitive neuroscientist who runs the Memory, Affect and Planning (MAP) Lab at Georgia Tech, is Ren’s faculty advisor, and was the corresponding author on both studies. “But the other study focuses on memories we already have and asks if we can change the emotions attached to them using music.”

Starting with the theory that memories can be updated when they’re retrieved, the researchers introduced emotional music during memory recollection to investigate whether music could alter the memory’s emotional content.

Forty-four healthy adults (24 of whom were female) with an average age of about 20 underwent a three-day episodic memory task with separate encoding, recollection and retrieval phases. Episodic memory is a conscious recollection of a previous experience together with its context, including time, place, and associated emotions.

“We wanted to start off with a random group of people and see if music has the power to modulate the emotional level of their memories,” Ren said.

On day one, participants were exposed to 15 neutral and five emotional short fictional stories and asked to picture themselves in each story as if they were experiencing the described scenario. They then typed out each scenario as they’d recalled it, using as much detail as possible, and rated their feelings on a nine-point scale. The purpose was to form memories similar to those that might result from watching a movie or reading a book.

On day two, participants underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan while 10 words were displayed on a screen in randomized positions. Four of the words were keywords from the previous days’ stories. The other six words were emotional ‘lures’ – three positive and three negative – that hadn’t appeared in the stories. The participants had to read the 10 words on the screen, determine which story was being referenced by the keywords, recall that story, and then select all the words on the screen that they felt best fit their experience of that story. While they completed the word selection task, participants were exposed to either positive or negative music or silence.

Participants completed two memory tests for the 15 neutral stories on day three. The first measured their recall, similar to what they’d done on day one when they were asked to type out what they recalled of the stories. The second was a forced-choice word recognition task. One at a time and in random order, participants were shown keywords and lures from the 15 stories and asked if they appeared on day one. To make it more difficult, the researchers included new words that didn’t appear on day one or two.

They found that emotional music, especially positive music, played in the background during memory reactivation could alter the emotional tone of complex memories. Participants selected negative lures less frequently when the background music was positive compared to when it was negative or silent.

“This sheds light on the malleability of memory in response to music, and the powerful role music can play in altering our existing memories,” said Ren.

While we’re unable to alter a bad memory by inserting a happy soundtrack at the time it’s being formed, the researchers say their findings suggest that listening to positive music while retrieving that old memory can reshape it.

“And perhaps we can help people shift their feelings and reshape the emotional tone attached to certain memories,” Brown said.

There’s always been some debate about whether listening to music while studying helps or hinders the retention of new information. If it helps, then there’s the question of whether certain types of music are better than others. These are the questions the researchers set out to answer in their second study.

“We wanted to probe music’s potential as a mnemonic device that helps us remember information more easily,” Ren said.

If you’ve learned to play a musical instrument and had to read music, you would probably be aware of the mnemonic Every Good Boy Deserves Food (or Deserves Favor or, alternatively, Every Good Boy Does Fine), the words assigned to the letters E, G, B, D and F, which represent the notes associated with the five lines of the treble clef.

The researchers asked 48 participants (25 female) aged 18 to 24 to learn a series of abstract shapes while listening to music with a familiar tone, rhythm, and melody or one that was atonal and irregular.

Listening to familiar, regularly structured – and, therefore, highly predictable – music enabled participants to learn and recall the sequences of shapes more quickly, whereas irregular music significantly impaired memory encoding. They attribute the quicker learning and recall to the brain’s creation of a ‘scaffold’ or structured framework for the newly acquired information.

“Depending [on] its familiarity and structure, music can help or hinder our memory,” Ren said. She discusses both studies in the video below.

The researchers view their findings as having the potential to inform music-based therapies for conditions like PTSD and depression or rehabilitation strategies for aging populations, particularly those with dementia.

“These studies are connected because they both explore innovative applications of music in memory modulation, offering insights for both every day and clinical use,” said Ren. “I’m excited to bring together my lifelong love of music with my interest in human memory. Because I think the next phase of my research could provide valuable evidence to support the development of music-based interventions for mental health and cognitive function.”

The study into the effect of music on learning was published in the journal PLOS One, and the study into music’s ability to reshape old memories was published in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience.

Source: Georgia Tech