Explaining the Music-Memory Connection
Researchers think they know why a song can get stuck in your head and why the effects of listening can vary.
Articles within this series
- Overview
- The Entertainment Elephant
- How Entertainment Can Influence Thoughts and Actions
- Little Squeaks Can Mean Big Problems
- Media Violence Study
- Teaching Kids to Kill
- Explaining the Music-Memory Connection
- Fiction and Females: The Pitfalls of Chick Lit
- One Mom's Media Experiences
- How to Combat Media's Influence in Your Home
- Next Steps / Related Information
Sometimes all it takes to stir a memory are a few bars from a particular song. Why? And why do melodies tend to get stuck in our heads? Blame it on the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain now believed to process and track music. This region is also active during reasoning and memory retrieval. Put the two functions together and it's no wonder "music" and "memory" harmonize so well.
As Petr Janata, a researcher at Dartmouth's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, explains, "This region in the front of the brain where we mapped musical activity is important for a number of functions, like assimilating information that is important to one's self, or mediating interactions between emotional and non-emotional information. Our results provide a stronger foundation for explaining the link between music, emotion and the brain."
Same Song, Same Person — Different Reactions Over Time
Researchers also discovered that an individual brain's neural circuit will map the same melody differently from session to session. This may explain why a certain piece of music can yield various responses in the same person over time. We may hear it one time and want to sing along. Another exposure may inspire dancing, melancholy or no reaction at all. If that's true, it makes sense that a teen who listens to angry or sexual music will argue that it has no harmful effect. At any given time, it may not. But since the mapping is dynamic, the same song may elicit a different reaction at some other time.
Janata says, "Music is such a sought-after stimulus. It's not necessary for human survival, yet something inside us craves it." It doesn't take a scientist to draw that conclusion. All you need is a teenager in your house. Still, it's the idea that we're getting closer to understanding such cravings that has Janata and his team excited … and it should give us added incentive to take music choices seriously.