Summary: New research shows that full songs are far more effective than spoken lyrics in evoking personal memories. By comparing reactions to popular pop songs and spoken-word versions, researchers found that music helps anchor memories to specific times and emotions.
Participants not only recalled events more quickly, but also experienced stronger feelings of re-living those moments with song cues. These findings may aid future efforts to use music playlists to support memory in aging populations, including those with dementia.
Key Facts:
- Full Songs > Lyrics: Songs evoked stronger, more vivid personal memories than spoken lyrics.
- Emotional Power: Positive, upbeat music was more likely to trigger joyful recollections.
- Therapeutic Potential: Music may help older adults and those with dementia recall meaningful life events.
Source: University of Waterloo
Listening to familiar music can trigger vivid memories, and new research suggests that it isn’t just sentimental lyrics or clever rhymes that take us back in time.
Researchers from the University of Waterloo investigated which component of music is most powerful in evoking memories. They compared listener reactions to hearing only spoken lyrics or the produced songs.
They found that complete songs were most effective in taking the listener down memory lane because we connect them to specific times and emotions.
This is the first study to propose a reason for why songs can cue detailed memories of our past. It is part of an ongoing series looking at whether individuals with dementia could use playlists from their youth to aid recall of precious memories from their past.
“We found songs were more effective and often brought back personal memories from the time when the song was popular,” said Dr. Myra Fernandes, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Waterloo.
“Music helps us remember by connecting memories to a certain period in our lives.”
Using a range of popular songs released between 2017 and 2020, the researchers asked 84 participants to listen to excerpts of pop songs and spoken lyrics. For each clip, they responded as soon as a personal memory came to mind and wrote about it.
The researchers analyzed the recall speed, timeframe and the feelings that the participants reported for memories elicited by the songs and lyrics.
The results suggest that songs act as temporal landmarks, or timestamps, that help guide the brain’s search through memory banks.
The study revealed that more positive and upbeat songs were associated with greater likelihood of triggering positive memories.
“Remarkably, song cues also led to stronger feelings of re-living or re-experiencing an event. And this is particularly relevant for older adults who may have difficulty spontaneously recreating past events from their lives,” Fernandes said.
Dr. Pelin Tanberg and Dr. Ryan Yeung, who were PhD candidates working in the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab in the Department of Psychology at the time of this work, are co-authors of the paper.
About this music and memory research news
Author: Media Relations
Source: University of Waterloo
Contact: Media Relations – University of Waterloo
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
“Evidence of temporal and emotional alignment between song cues and their evoked autobiographical memories” by Pelin Tanberg et al. Memory & Cognition
Abstract
Evidence of temporal and emotional alignment between song cues and their evoked autobiographical memories
Hearing music can evoke vivid memories from one’s past.
Here, we examined how musical versus verbal features of pop songs influenced retrieval of autobiographical memories (AMs) and explored mechanisms of action.
We first compared the quantity and quality of AMs evoked by musical cues (popular songs) versus matched nonmusical cues (spoken lyrics).
On each trial, participants (N = 84) listened to an auditory cue, which was either musical (a song clip) or spoken (a computer-generated neutral voice reading the lyrics from the song clip).
While listening, participants indicated via button press whether the cue evoked an AM – if so, they described the AM in text, then rated the AM’s properties (e.g., age of the memory, feelings of reliving, cue familiarity).
We found that song cues were significantly more likely to evoke AMs (M = 49%) than spoken cues (M = 33%), even when controlling for cue familiarity.
Song cues also elicited significantly greater feelings of reliving the evoked AM, compared to spoken cues, though this effect disappeared after controlling for cue familiarity.
Critically, we found evidence of temporal and emotional alignment between cues and their evoked AMs: older cues (e.g., songs released in 2017 vs. 2020) evoked older AMs, and more positive cues (e.g., songs of higher valence, as derived from Spotify audio features) evoked AMs with more positive content (as derived from sentiment analysis).
Findings suggest that song cues enhance AM accessibility by setting the temporal and emotional contexts for retrieval.
