Catchy songs remembered
Our Memory for Music
Try this quick exercise: open your music library, pick a song, and play just the first 3 seconds. Now, try to sing or hum the next 5 seconds of it. Give yourself 1 point if you succeed. Do this for 20 songs. How many points did you score? If it’s more than 15, we’re not surprised! Think about what you’ve just done: you effortlessly recalled the melody, rhythm, and maybe even lyrics for over 15 songs in a short space of time.
Our brains have an extraordinary ability to store and retrieve music memories, often without us realising it. If you hear a catchy tune, chances are you’ll remember parts of it days later. Listen to it a few more times, and you’ll likely know it by heart. Compare that to how much effort it takes to memorise information from a textbook or remember daily events.
Interestingly, this musical memory ability is resilient, even in people with amnesia. For example, Clive Wearing, a musician who suffered from a brain infection that caused severe memory loss, couldn’t remember his past or retain new information, but he could still play piano pieces and recall melodies. This shows how deeply music embeds itself in our memory.
How Do Musical Memories Differ from Other Memories?
Long-term memories (such as personal experiences and knowledge) require several brain regions to work together. For example, when you recall what you saw earlier, you use the occipital lobe (vision processing). If you think about a past event, both the temporal and frontal lobes are involved, with the hippocampus playing a key role in piecing it all together.
In cases of amnesia, such as Clive Wearing's, damage to the hippocampus disrupts this process. However, music-related memories often remain intact, suggesting they might be stored in a different area of the brain.
Musical Memories in Alzheimer's
People with Alzheimer’s disease, a condition that causes memory and cognitive decline, often retain the ability to remember music, even when other memories fade. Researchers have identified a "musical memory area" in the brain that remains functional even when other parts suffer damage, explaining why familiar songs can trigger memories in individuals with dementia.
Music’s unique pathway in the brain not only highlights the power of musical memory but also opens doors for using music as a therapeutic tool in memory care and learning.
This insight could also explain why music is such a powerful tool for learning and retention, particularly for individuals with dyslexia. Using songs to teach key concepts engages parts of the brain that are more resilient and efficient at retaining information.
References
[1] Sacks, O. 2008. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York: Vintage Books.
[2] Dickerson, B. C., and Eichenbaum, H. 2010. The episodic memory system: neurocircuitry and disorders. Neuropsychopharmacology 35(1):86–104. doi:10.1038/npp.2009.126
[3] Jagust, W. 2014. Dad can do time travel … but grandpa can’t! Front. Young Minds 2:18. doi:10.3389/frym.2014.00018
[4] Benzinger, T. L. S., Blazey, T., Jack, C. R., Koeppe, R. A., Su, Y., Xiong, C., et al. 2013. Regional variability of imaging biomarkers in autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110:E4502–9. doi:10.1073/pnas.1317918110
[5] Jacobsen, J. H., Stelzer, J., Fritz, T. H., Chételat, G., La Joie, R., and Turner, R. 2015. Why musical memory can be preserved in advanced Alzheimer’s disease. Brain 138:2438–50. doi:10.1093/brain/awv135
