Neuroscientists explore the intersection between music and memory

The soundtrack to this story begins with a vaguely recognizable and pleasant groove. But if I stop writing and listen for just a second, the music reveals itself completely. In Freddie Hubbard’s comfortable, lilting trumpet solo over Herbie Hancock’s melodic, repetitive piano, I recognize “Cantaloupe Island.” Then, with my fingers back on the keyboard, Freddie and Herbie fade into the background, followed by more instrumental music: a captivating but not distracting sonic nutrition that fuels my focus and productivity.

Somewhere, I think, Yiren Ren is studying, focused on her research that shows how music influences learning and memory. Maybe she’s listening to Norah Jones, or some other musician she feels comfortable with. Because that’s how it works: the music we know and love, the music that seems predictable or even safe, that music can help us study and learn. Meanwhile, Ren has also discovered that other types of music can influence our emotions and reshape old memories.

Ren, a sixth-year doctoral student in Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology, explores these concepts as lead author of two new research papers in the journals PLOS One And Cognitive, affective and behavioral neuroscience (CABN).

“These studies are related because they both explore innovative applications of music in memory modulation, offering insights for both everyday and clinical use,” Ren says.

But the collective research explores the impacts of music in very different ways, says Ren’s faculty advisor and study co-author Thackery Brown.

“One study looks at how music changes the quality of memory as it’s being formed. That’s learning,” says Brown, a cognitive neuroscientist who directs the MAP (Memory, Affect, and Planning) Lab at Tech. “But the other study looks at memories we already have and asks whether we can change the emotions associated with them through music.”

Creating atmospheres with music

When we watch a movie with solid music, music created to evoke emotions, what we hear guides us exactly where the composer wants to take us. CABN In one study, Ren, Brown and their collaborators at the University of Colorado (including former Georgia Tech assistant professor Grace Leslie) report that this type of “background music” may also be powerful enough to change how we remember our past.

Their study involved 44 Georgia Tech students who listened to movie soundtracks while recalling a difficult memory. Ren is quick to point out that this was not a clinical trial, and so these participants were not identified as people with mood disorders. “We wanted to start with a random group of people and see if music had the power to modulate the emotional level of their memories,” he added.

It turns out that this is the case. Participants listened to movie soundtracks and incorporated new emotions into their memories, in harmony with the mood of the music. And the effect was lasting. A day later, when participants recalled these same memories, but without musical accompaniment, their emotional tone still matched that of the music played the day before.

The researchers were able to observe all of this using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). They were able to observe altered brain activity in the study participants, increased connectivity between the amygdala, where emotions are processed, and other areas of the brain associated with memory and information integration.

“This highlights the malleability of memory in response to music and the powerful role that music can play in modifying our existing memories,” Ren says.

Ren herself is a multi-instrumentalist who originally planned to become a professional musician. As an undergraduate at Boston University, she double-majored in film production and sound design, as well as psychology.

She found a way to combine her interests in music and neuroscience and is interested in how music therapy can be designed to help people with mood disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression, “particularly in cases where someone might exaggerate the negative components of a memory,” Ren says.

There’s no time machine that would allow us to go back and insert happy music into the mix while a negative event is happening and a memory is forming, “but we can retrieve old memories by listening to affective music,” Brown says. “And maybe we can help people change their feelings and reshape the emotional tone attached to certain memories.”

Embracing the Familiar

The second study asks two oft-repeated questions: Should we listen to music while we work or study? And if so, are there some types of music that are more beneficial than others? The answer to both questions may lie, at least in part, within the broad parameters of personal taste. But even so, there are limits.

Think back to my description of “Cantaloupe Island” at the beginning of this story and how a familiar old jazz standard helped the writer keep his brain and fingers moving. In the same way, Norah Jones helps Ren when she’s working on new research around music and memory. But if, for some reason, I wanted to test my concentration, I’d play a different kind of jazz, maybe 1950s bebop with its frenetic rhythm and off-center tone, or maybe a chorus of screaming cats. Same effect. It would demand my attention and no work would get done.

For this study, Ren combined her talents as a musician and composer with her research interests in whether music can enhance—or impair—our ability to learn or remember new information. “We wanted to explore the potential of music as a mnemonic device that helps us remember information more easily,” she says. (One example of a mnemonic device is “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” which stands for EGBDF and helps new pianists learn the order of notes on a keyboard.)

The 48 participants in this study were asked to learn sequences of abstract shapes while listening to different types of music. Ren played a piece of music, following a traditional or familiar pattern of tone, rhythm, and melody. She then played the exact same set of notes, but out of order, giving the piece an atonal structure.

When listening to familiar, predictable music, participants learned and remembered the pattern sequences more quickly because their brains created a structured framework, or scaffolding, for the new information. In contrast, familiar but irregular music (think of this author and the bebop example) made it harder for participants to learn.

“Depending on its familiarity and structure, music can help or hinder our memory,” says Ren, who wants to further research the neural mechanisms by which music influences human behavior.

She plans to complete her PhD this December and is seeking postdoctoral research positions that will allow her to continue the work she began at Georgia Tech. Building on this, Ren hopes to develop music-based therapies for conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, while exploring new rehabilitation strategies for aging populations and people with dementia.

“These early studies reveal that music can both help and hinder our memory, depending on its familiarity and structure,” Ren says.

“I am delighted to be able to combine my lifelong love of music with my interest in human memory. I believe that the next phase of my research could provide valuable evidence to support the development of music-based interventions for mental health and cognitive function.”