Music and Autobiographical Memory

Belfi, Amy M.; Jakubowski, Kelly

doi:10.1177/20592043211047123

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 32 publications

(67 reference statements)

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“…Indeed, music-related life memories, such as the one from one's adolescence, are often sharp, flashbulb memories particularly resistant to time threats. 4 Music-driven memory benefits could be associated not only with music capacity to boost the encoding of an event, but also to protect it from interference. Interestingly, it has been reported that when a piece of information is associated with a high reward cue (i.e., money), it becomes more resistant to interference through the activation in the hippocampus and reward-related areas (such as the VS 31 ).…”

Section: Implications and Future Directions For Music Cognition Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this vein, through reward mechanisms, music might be preferentially associated with events from one's lifetime, thus being particularly helpful in stimulating episodic and autobiographical memory in both healthy and clinical populations. Indeed, music‐related life memories, such as the one from one's adolescence, are often sharp, flashbulb memories particularly resistant to time threats 4 . Music‐driven memory benefits could be associated not only with music capacity to boost the encoding of an event, but also to protect it from interference.…”

Section: Implications and Future Directions For Music Cognition Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The memory for music itself has been even proposed as a special memory system that can be spared in the presence of memory deficits caused by neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's 2 . Furthermore, music has been shown to effectively promote the encoding and retrieval of nonmusical‐associated information, such as verbal 3 material, as well as autobiographical memories 4 . For these reasons, music is considered to be an effective tool for stimulating episodic memory in both healthy and clinical populations.…”

Section: Pleasure Music and Memory: A Strong Ancient Linkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Memory modulations through musical pleasure

Ferreri

Rodrı́guez-Fornells

2022

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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Music, thanks to its strong evocative power, is considered a powerful mnemonic tool for both normal and clinical populations. However, the mechanisms underpinning the music‐driven benefits on memory remain unclear. In memory research, reward dopaminergic signals have been highlighted as a major modulator of memory traces consolidation. Over the last years, via behavioral and pharmacological approaches, we have investigated the hypothesis that dopaminergic‐dependent musical pleasure is a crucial mechanism underpinning music‐driven memory benefits. Our results show that the pleasure felt during music listening, modulated by both the dopaminergic transmission and participants’ sensitivity to music reward, can increase episodic memory performance for the music itself as well as for nonmusical‐associated information. In this commentary paper, we aim to review the main findings obtained from three different studies, in order to discuss current advances and future directions in this research area.

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Section: Implications and Future Directions For Music Cognition Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications and Future Directions For Music Cognition Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pleasure Music and Memory: A Strong Ancient Linkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Memory modulations through musical pleasure

Ferreri

Rodrı́guez-Fornells

2022

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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“…Music can bring back vivid memories from across one's lifespan (Belfi et al, 2016; Cady et al, 2008; Janata et al, 2007). Over the past decade, researchers have shown increased interest in music‐evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs; Belfi & Jakubowski, 2021), perhaps because music is a valued and easily accessible commodity that many people engage with daily across the world (Juslin et al, 2008; North et al, 2004). Music also appears to be a particularly effective cue for positive autobiographical memories (Jakubowski & Eerola, 2021; Janata et al, 2007) that are intimately connected to one's sense of identity (Lamont & Loveday, 2020; Loveday et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing music‐ and food‐evoked autobiographical memories in young and older adults: A diary study

Jakubowski

Belfi

Kvavilashvili

et al. 2023

British J of Psychology

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Previous research has found that music brings back more vivid and emotional autobiographical memories than various other retrieval cues. However, such studies have often been low in ecological validity and constrained by relatively limited cue selection and predominantly young adult samples. Here, we compared music to food as cues for autobiographical memories in everyday life in young and older adults. In two separate four-day periods, 39 younger (ages 18-34) and 39 older (ages 60-77) adults recorded their music-and food-evoked autobiographical memories in paper diaries. Across both age groups, music triggered more frequent autobiographical memories, a greater proportion of involuntary memories, and memories rated as more personally important in comparison to food cues. Age differences impacted music-and food-evoked memories similarly, with older adults consistently recalling older and less specific memories, which they rated as more positive, vivid, and rehearsed. However, young and older adults did not differ in the number or involuntary nature of their recorded memories. This work represents an important step in understanding the phenomenology of naturally occurring music-evoked autobiographical memories across adulthood and provides new insights into how and why music may be a more effective trigger for personally valued memories than certain other everyday cues.

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“…This is subserved by developmental plasticity in the reward system especially in adolescence and young adulthood (Davidow et al, 2016; Fasano et al, 2023). While the same reward system may be involved in autobiographical memory for music (Barrett & Janata, 2016), and may be linked to the reminiscence bump effect of stronger autobiographical associations for music from adolescence and young adulthood (Belfi & Jakubowski, 2021), the roles of development and individual differences in musical engagement on imagined narratives are relatively unknown. We hypothesize that developmental maturation and individual differences in musical engagement would affect the vividness of imagined content during music listening and that would vary between cultures.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Imaginings from an unfamiliar world: Narrative engagement with a new musical system.

Loui,

Kubit,

et al. 2023

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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Human imagination is generative and creative yet deeply rooted in culture and familiarity. Recent studies have quantified the effects of culture on stories that are imagined during music listening, but the music used in previous work was always drawn from a tradition familiar to participants from at least one of the cultures. Here we report the first study of imagined stories to music written in a musical system that is novel to participants from each culture, thus allowing for a direct comparison of narratives prompted by the same set of excerpts that is comparably unfamiliar to both groups. Music composed in the Bohlen–Pierce scale was presented to participants from two geographically defined cultures: Boston, United States and Beijing, China. We also examined how individual differences, such as in musicality and sensitivity to musical reward, might affect narrative engagement and semantic content of the imagined stories as measured by tools from natural language processing. Results showed that semantic spaces of music-evoked imaginings differed between Boston and Beijing cohorts. While both cultures were similarly engaged by the story response task, differences emerged in the semantic content of the imagined stories. Boston participants who reported being more absorbed by music wrote more unconventional stories, whereas Beijing participants who reported more emotional responses to music wrote more conventional stories. These results reveal the roles of culture and individual differences in modes of narrative engagement and imagination during music listening.

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Music and Autobiographical Memory

Cited by 7 publications

References 32 publications

Memory modulations through musical pleasure

Memory modulations through musical pleasure

Comparing music‐ and food‐evoked autobiographical memories in young and older adults: A diary study

Imaginings from an unfamiliar world: Narrative engagement with a new musical system.

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