Notes & Nostalgia – How Music Impacts Emotions and Memory

Every fantastic movie has an equally exceptional soundtrack guiding the watcher through their feelings and heightening the underlying emotional notes of the film. Each person’s lifetime is a musical experience similar to a movie with taste, preference and association with memories. Looking at life through its soundtrack, you can understand each period’s emotions and feelings for an individual. Music is a universal theory for understanding human emotions, with resonance being the carrier for the magic that music helps humans and living things feel.  Music profoundly shapes our memories and emotions, acting as nostalgia for our narratives, and incorporating more music into one’s lifestyle is a natural health remedy.

Over the years, thousands of studies have been conducted about music and memories. The underlying understanding that music and the human brain are connected is undeniable. The response one’s mind has to music is evident through the sense of transportation they experience when a specific song plays and flashes them back to thoughts and feelings from years ago. Music has the power to teleport individuals by targeting their long-term implicit memories, I am sure everyone has had this experience showcasing that (the unconscious memories that can last a lifetime).

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Harvard Studies

Two recent Harvard studies conducted in Japan and the United States found that music doesn’t just help retrieve old memories but helps create new ones as well. Both sets of healthy elderly participants in the studies tested significantly better on memory tests after they had completed a daily exercise accompanied by music. These results showcase that the stimulation and resonance from music of all genres enhance humans’ memory capabilities. Music has often been prescribed as a remedy for memory-related diseases like Alzheimer’s. Specifically, those with dementia experience a profound increase in memory when exposed to music.

This research showcases the benefits of music in association with memory; furthermore, dementia can trigger positive memories from the past that otherwise would be lost, as stated by Dr. Shahram Heshmat. Overall, the interplay between music and memory is undeniable, and there is immense potential for using music therapeutically in educational settings and restoring lost memories in cognitive rehabilitation.

Music stimulates nearly all of the brain, including but not limited to the hippocampus and amygdala, the components that activate emotional responses through music, as well as the limbic system also activates pleasure and motivation centers. This is a fundamental reason your foot starts tapping when a catchy song comes on, according to a Harvard study done in 1993 by Andrew Budson. This shows that music can produce physical responses in the human body and mind. Music evokes your feelings; the salience of each sound signifies an innate emotion, giving space to reconstruct your mood and tempering any negativity, and hearing music that one associates with the past can offer a strong feeling of knowing. It affects us all; how can one implement it into their lives to their benefit?

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Music and Mood

As discussed above, the correlation between music and mood is undeniable: an invisible string that pulls the emotions out of vaults and lets the listener feel a sense of nostalgia. Music evokes your feelings; the salience of each sound signifies an innate emotion, giving space to reconstruct your mood and tempering any negativity, and hearing music that one associates with the past can offer a strong feeling of knowing. Humans have an innate sense for melodies and are fascinatingly better at remembering the vocals of songs rather than their titles.

However, they also have the opposite tendency of placing titles when they have instrumental melodies— this link between music and text suggests that music is encoded in semantic memory similar to text. This gives researchers reason to believe that music is encoded in the brain by the perceptual memory system, categorizing auditory information into rhythms and melodies. These findings show a direct relationship between music and memory processing musical information that could be associated with emotional and semantic information, the associative memory.

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Music and Memory

Music commentates on milestone moments from weddings to graduation; a song is always associated with a pivotal moment. It can evoke profound emotions, allowing listeners to engage with their feelings fully, and each emotional melody signifies innate sentiments that reshape our mood. Research indicates that humans possess an exceptional ability to remember melodies, often recalling the emotional resonance of songs long after forgetting their titles. This phenomenon suggests that music is encoded in our brains through a perceptual memory system, intertwining auditory information with emotional and semantic associations.

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Incorporating into Playlists

After understanding the consequences, a song can have on an individual’s mood the power of picking your playlist wisely is a skill to master.  As a listener you have the power regarding music intake; if depressed, a melancholy playlist is thrown on, or if on cloud nine, fresh finds are the vibe. The listener has the power, so why not use it to one’s benefit? =

While there is the stereotype that music encourages engagement in sex, drugs, and rock and roll, music offers healing frequencies, altering mood and energy memories in positive ways. A playlist is the movie soundtrack to each portion of one’s life, unlocking one’s memories, improving one’s mood, and enhancing one’s life’s narrative! Countless scientific studies showcase the link between music and memory and give numerous reasons that support increased music intake in any individual’s life: whether you do so through curated playlists, artists’ discoveries, or vinyl. Discover, listen, and create—your symphony awaits!

For more interesting facts about music, read Quincy Jones – Top 10 Facts About the Music Legend.