It’s no secret that aging can take a toll on memory. Names, events, and general timelines all become a little blurry over time, even if you haven’t been diagnosed with dementia or another neurological disease. But new research suggests that the ability to recall key parts of music may persist into old age. Published in this week’s journal PLoS ONpicture, It highlights the unique connection humans make with musical sounds and could serve as the basis for helping patients with neurodegenerative diseases build new memories.
The study authors recruited 90 healthy participants aged 18-86 years old who gathered as they were leaving the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra in St. John’s, Canada. The participants were called into a separate room and instructed to listen to three different pieces of music performed by the orchestra: one piece by WA Mozart and two completely new experimental pieces written specifically for the study. Another small group of participants watched a video recording of the performance. Before each piece, the orchestra played the main theme contained in each piece. The audience was instructed to remember the theme. When the entire piece was played, the audience was instructed to press a button every time they specifically heard the theme. In the end, the 80-year-old participants were able to correctly identify the theme at roughly the same rate as the teenage participants.
“Overall, there was no main effect of age on the musical theme recognition task, nor were there any significant interactions between age and familiarity, environment, or musical training,” the researchers wrote.
Mozart’s themes were equally well recalled regardless of age or musical background.
The experiment aimed to see how long it would take people of different ages to recall music of various levels of familiarity and tonality. The first piece was Mozart’s famous A Night of Lovewas deemed tonal because it was familiar (because most listeners would recognize it) and followed common rules commonly found in traditional classical music, such as a chromatic-based hierarchy. The researchers commissioned two other pieces from the Newfoundland Conservatory of Music. The first, “Pirate Waltz,” had a pleasing yet novel “tonal” sound. For the second, “Unexpectedly Absent,” the musicians went in the opposite direction, creating a deliberately atonal sound that was harsh and outside the rules and boundaries of tropical classical music.
Participants were presented with the main musical theme associated with each piece three times before listening to the entire piece. In all three cases, the theme was first performed by the entire orchestra and then alone by a soloist using one instrument. Listeners were instructed to identify the theme in the entire performance, whether it was performed by one instrument or multiple instruments.
Overall, participants were much better at recalling the theme of Mozart’s piece than the other two compositions, suggesting that musical familiarity may play an important role in memory. When Mozart was removed from the analysis, participants were better able to recall the theme of the tonal “Pirate Waltz” than the atonal “Unexpectedly Absent,” regardless of age.
“The lack of age effects is encouraging evidence that diverse musical cues may promote cognitive scaffolding and thus improve encoding and subsequent recognition,” the researchers wrote. “The superior performance in laboratory settings compared to ecological settings encourages the expansion of ecological studies in the field.”
Musical melodies may act as “cognitive scaffolding” that helps build strong memories.
The researchers believe that part of the reason listeners were able to accurately identify the themes in Mozart’s songs has to do with the emotions that certain musical themes evoke in people. Most of the study participants had heard the performances in the past, and those past performances were deeply etched in their memories. The authors say these findings suggest that music may be used as a kind of “cognitive scaffolding,” or musical aid, to help people construct and store new memories.
“By providing evidence that recognition memory is not affected by age in realistic listening situations, this study further supports the use of music specifically as a means of cognitive maintenance and training in older adults,” the researchers note. “Music recognition can therefore be considered a strength, allowing it to scaffold other aspects of memory in rehabilitation settings.”
In theory, the study suggests that new words and concepts may become easier to remember over time when they’re paired with memories of familiar music. The analysis also seems to lend some credence to primary school language teachers around the world, who have been incorporating music and song into learning for generations. It might also explain why this writer still sings a slightly out-of-tune melody in his head when recalling the alphabet.
