“Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more Memories we have of it.”
This ability of music to bring up clear and emotional memories is a phenomenon well-known to medical doctors and brain researchers. Music can trigger intense recollections from the past. It can trigger our senses, even such senses as taste and smell. It can also provoke strong emotions and memories from early life experiences. But why?
"Music can take you back in time, as well as act like a jolt of electricity that can fire up your brain and get it going," says Andrew Budson, chief of cognitive and behavioral neurology at Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System. "We all have the familiar experience of going back to our hometown, visiting our high school, and feeling the memories come flooding back. Music provides an auditory and emotional setting that allows us to retrieve all those memories."
The Different Types of Memory
When we perform music, we use "procedural" memory. This is a type of long-term "implicit" memory, which is the unconscious ability to remember a habit or routine we can do every day without thinking about it, such as riding a bike or brushing our teeth.
Episodic memory is a type of long-term "explicit" memory, which is a conscious recollection and is what your brain uses to remember — for example, items on your shopping list.
Both implicit and explicit are types of long-term memory — procedural memory is unconscious and effortless. Episodic memory requires conscious work to remember.
In healthy brains, episodic memory allows you to be transported back in time to a specific event or time when you listen to a piece of music. Episodic memory originates in the brain's hippocampus region, which "is the first to go" when dementia hits.
While the ability to sing or make music is procedural memory, meaning you don't have to deliberately think about what you're doing. Research has shown that Alzheimer's attacks the hippocampus first, explaining why procedural memory still enables dementia patients to remember lyrics and perform - it's an entirely different memory system.
Patients with Alzheimer's can still experience the music "time travel" episodic memory phenomenon even after the disease has attacked their hippocampus; as long as those episodic memories are more than two years old and have been 'consolidated, they can be accessed even though the hippocampus has been destroyed.
And this is why people with Alzheimer's can recall stuff from their childhood but not remember what they had for lunch or whom they saw yesterday.
A well-known recent example has been that of legendary singer Tony Bennett, 96, who, in the throes of Alzheimer's, could still flawlessly perform his classic hits. That is awesome!
We know there is power in music, but today's research shows how powerful it is. We don't just hear a song once, we encode that memory, and deeply encoded music can unlock memories. Just another reason to study and play music!!