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Experts say your favourite music is linked to both your memories and personality

Sun 17 Apr 2022    
EcoBalance
| 2 min read

Music is a powerful tool to learn more about ourselves. In relation to this, two studies are offering a new outlook on how our favourite tunes are linked to memories as well as our personalities. Also, it also offers insights into how those connections can make lives better.

When you hear a familiar song, it immediately transports you to another moment of your life, bringing back details in startling clarity. This isn’t just a feeling, there is a science behind how our minds connect music with memory.

Routinely listening to music that is dear to their heart has been found to improve the brain’s adaptability in early Alzheimer’s patients or who have mild cognitive impairment.

Listening to music that is meaningful stimulates neural pathways in the brain that helped them maintain higher levels of functioning, as per Michael Thaut, who was the senior author of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Toronto. This was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease in November.

Songs that held unique significance, like the music that people had close memories of that ultimately led to increased memory performance on tests. The findings could support the inclusion of music-based therapy in the treatment of cognitively impaired patients in the future.

Changes were most notable in the prefrontal cortex, known as the control centre of the brain, where decision-making, social behaviour moderation, personality expression and the planning of complex mental behaviour occur.

When the patients heard music that was personal to them, it powered up a musical neural network connecting different regions of the brain, based on MRIs taken of the patients before and after listening to the music. This differed from when they heard new, unfamiliar music, which only triggered a specific part of the brain tuned into listening.

There were only 14 participants in the study, including six musicians, and they listened to specially curated playlists for an hour a day over three weeks. But these participants are the same ones from an earlier study that identified the neural mechanisms for preserving music-related memories in those experiencing early cognitive decline.

“Whether you’re a lifelong musician or have never even played an instrument, music is an access key to your memory, your pre-frontal cortex. It’s simple — keep listening to the music that you’ve loved all your life. Your all-time favourite songs, those pieces that are especially meaningful to you — make that your brain gym,” said Thaut, who is the director of the University of Toronto’s Music and Health Science Research Collaboratory and a professor at the Faculty of Music and Temerty Faculty of Medicine, in a statement. He also holds the Tier One Canada Research Chair in Music, Neuroscience and Health. 

The research is a promising beginning that could lead to music therapy applications with a broader purpose.

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