Effects of familiar music exposure on deliberate retrieval of remote episodic and semantic memories in healthy aging adults

Abstract

Familiar music facilitates memory retrieval in adults with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. This raises the possibility that music can be used as a rehabilitative tool to aid memory abilities more generally. However, the mechanisms behind this effect, and its generality, are unclear because of a lack of parallel work in healthy aging. In particular, exposure to familiar music enhances spontaneous recall of memories directly cued by the music, but it is unknown whether such effects extend to deliberate recall more generally — e.g., to memories not directly linked to the music being played. It is also unclear whether familiar music cues boost recall of specific episodes versus more generalized semantic memories, or whether its effects are partly driven by domain-general mechanisms (e.g., improved mood). In the current study, we will examine the effects of familiar music on deliberate recall and differentiate potential underlying mechanisms. We will expose healthy adults ages 65-80 years old (N = 75) to familiar music clips from earlier in life, unfamiliar music clips, and non-musical audio clips across three study sessions. Immediately after each clip, we will assess free recall of remote memories for pre-selected events. Those memories will then be scored for episodic and semantic details using the Autobiographical Interview. We hypothesize that familiar music may enhance recall of specific events, such that participants will recall more episodic details after exposure to familiar music than unfamiliar music or non-musical audio. We will also test a competing hypothesis that familiar music may prompt more general recollections of periods of life, and thus will increase recall of semantic details in comparison with the unfamiliar music and no-music conditions. The results of this study will advance knowledge of the mechanisms by which music affects memory, with potential implications for the use of music as a therapeutic device for declining memory.

Considering both experimenter-manipulated and self-reported familiarity in music-evoked autobiographical memories

“…Here, we conducted a preregistered (https://osf.io/tz5ck/) secondary analyses of data from a study investigating the effect of familiar vs. unfamiliar music on deliberate recall of autobiographical memories in cognitively healthy older adults (Bloom et al, 2023). We leveraged within-participant analyses of self-reported memories and emotions evoked by music that was manipulated to be either familiar or unfamiliar.…”

“…One-hundred twelve participants (Agemean = 70-years-old) were recruited for a previous study (Bloom et al, 2023), which examined the effect of music on deliberate memory retrieval in cognitively healthy older adults. 37 were excluded for not meeting our inclusion criteria (see "Pre-screen Call" for criteria and Supplementary Materials for a breakdown of exclusion reasons and demographic information), resulting in a total of 75 participants included in these analyses.…”

“…Participants were read a list of pre-selected memory prompts for each of the three developmental time periods and were excluded if they did not report having a memory associated with at least 15 of these prompts for each time period (N=5, inclusion criteria #6). More information on this episodic memory selection can be found in Bloom et al (2023). These episodic memories were not a focus of the current paper because here we only examined spontaneously evoked (and not deliberately probed) memories.…”

“…If participants did not score above 16/22 on this test, they were consequently excluded from the study (no participants were excluded based on this criterion, inclusion criterion #7). For more information on why this cutoff score was chosen, see Bloom et al (2023). If a participant met all the above inclusion criteria, they were asked to provide consent to take part in three experimental sessions (inclusion criterion #8), which were scheduled at least a week following the pre-screen call, with at least one week in between sessions.…”

“…However, music appears to be more effective at cueing autobiographical memories than other cues only when it is familiar . Indeed, music's efficacy as an autobiographical memory cue appears to be strengthened by familiarity (Salakka et al, 2021): familiar music elicits more spontaneous memories than unfamiliar music and non-musical auditory stimuli (Bloom et al, 2023). Studies on "music-dependent memories," which show that the retrieval of recently encoded items is improved when music that was presented during encoding is played again during recall (Alonso et al, 2016;Ferreri et al, 2014;Smith, 1985), suggest that music enhances memory via contextual reinstatement.…”