Essential
- A study reveals that the songs, much more than their words simply pronounced, rekindle personal memories by acting as temporal landmarks.
- Music evokes positive memories more quickly and intensifies the feeling of reliving events.
- This could help people with dementia to reconnect with their past thanks to personalized playlists.
Who has never felt a wave of memories going up when hearing the first notes of an old familiar song? A Canadian study by the University of Waterloo, published in the journal Memory & Cognitionbrings new light to this almost banal phenomenon. “We observed that our favorite songs often revived personal memories of the time they were popular”note the researchers in a press release.
Songs, time tags for memories
To achieve this observation, the team of scientists compared the effects of simple words of songs pronounced to those of whole songs on the memory of the participants. Result: the entire songs have aroused more memories, more quickly and with more details. “Music helps us to remember because it comes to connect memories to a specific period of our life”they explain.
The experience, carried out on a group of 84 volunteers, consisted in making them listen to extracts of pop songs released between 2017 and 2020. As soon as a personal memory emerged, they had to describe it. The researchers then analyzed the speed of evocation, the nature of the memory and the emotions associated with it. They thus discovered that “The songs serve as temporal landmarks, or beacons, which help the brain to sail through its memories”.
Reado the memory of dementia patients
The work also shows, without much surprise, that optimistic and dynamic songs more often generate positive memories. But above all, the pieces of music seem to trigger a strong feeling of “reliving” the reminded memory. “In a remarkable way, the songs cause more intense sensations to re -explore ‘an event. And this is all the more relevant for the elderly who can have difficulty rekindling memories”specify researchers. Hence a hypothesis: personalized playlists could help people with dementia in accessing their most precious memories.
This is not the first time that music therapy has shown beneficial effects on patients with neurodegenerative disorders, starting with Alzheimer’s. A 2024 study has notably shown that music reduced their level of distress and anxiety, while increasing their vigilance and their mood. Significant point: it is the songs listened to between 10 and 30 years old that are the most effective. Another research goes even further by suggesting that music could help regenerate certain damaged brain connections, dementia factory marks.
