Music can change the best way you concentrate on the past

Have you ever noticed how a certain song can bring back a flood of memories? Maybe it's the melody played at your first dance or the anthem of an unforgettable road trip.

People often view these musical memories as fixed snapshots of the past. But current research my team and I published evidence that music can do greater than just trigger memories – it actually could Change the best way you remember them.

I’m a psychology researcher on the Georgia Institute of Technology. Together with my mentor Thackery Brown and music experts from the University of Colorado Boulder Sophia Mehdizadeh And Grace Leslieour recently published research uncovered fascinating connections between music, emotions and memory. In particular, listening to music can Change your attitude towards what you remember – may offer recent ways to assist people deal with difficult memories.

Music, stories and memory

When you take heed to music, it's not only your ears which might be busy. The areas of your brain liable for emotions and memory also turn out to be energetic. The hippocampus, which is vital for Store and recall memories, works closely together with the amygdala, the brain emotional center. This is partly why certain songs aren’t only memorable but additionally deeply emotional.

While The ability of music to evoke emotions and trigger memories is understood, we wondered whether it could also change the emotional content of existing memories. Our hypothesis was based on the concept of Memory reactivation – the concept that when a memory is recalled, it temporarily becomes malleable in order that recent information will be absorbed.

We have developed one three day experiment to check whether music played during retrieval can introduce recent emotional elements into the unique memory.

On the primary day, participants memorized a series of short, emotionally neutral stories. The next day, they recalled these stories while listening to either positive music, negative music, or silence. On the ultimate day, we asked participants to recall the stories again, this time without music. On the second day, we recorded her brain activity using fMRI scans, which measure brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow.

Our approach is analogous to how movie soundtracks can change viewers' perception of a scene. However, on this case, we examined how music can alter participants' actual memories of an event.

The results were striking. When participants listened to emotionally charged music while recalling the neutral stories, they were New emotional elements usually tend to be included into the story that fit the mood of the music. For example, neutral stories that were recalled with positive music within the background were later remembered as more positive, even when the music was not playing.

Even more fascinating were the brain scans we took throughout the experiment. This was the case when participants recalled stories while listening to music increased activity within the amygdala and hippocampus – Areas which might be crucial for emotional memory processing. This is why a song related to a major life event can feel so powerful—it prompts emotional and memory-processing regions at the identical time.

We also saw evidence of strong communication between these parts of the brain that process emotional memory and the parts of the brain involved in visual sensory processing. This suggests that music could infuse emotional details into memories as participants visually imagined the stories.

Musical memories

Our results suggest that music acts as an emotional attractant, intertwining with memories and subtly changing their emotional tone. Memories may additionally be more flexible than previously thought and could possibly be influenced by external auditory cues during retrieval.

Although further research is required, our findings have exciting implications for each on a regular basis life and medicine.

For people fighting conditions equivalent to depression or PTSD Negative memories will be overwhelmingCarefully chosen music could help solid these memories in a more positive light, potentially reducing their negative emotional impact over time. It also opens up recent opportunities to explore Music-based interventions within the treatment of depression and other mental illnesses.

On an on a regular basis level, our research highlights the potential power of the soundtrack people select for his or her lives. Memories will be remixed and remastered with music, very like your favorite songs. The music you take heed to while reminiscing and even going about your each day routines could subtly influence the way you remember those experiences in the long run.

Next time you set on a favourite playlist, consider how it’d affect not only your current mood, but additionally your future memories.