{"id":38249,"date":"2024-12-02T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=38249"},"modified":"2024-12-03T07:24:26","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T07:24:26","slug":"music-can-change-how-you-feel-about-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/music-can-change-how-you-feel-about-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Music can change how you feel about the past"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yiren Ren<\/a>, Georgia Institute of Technology<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever noticed how a particular song can bring back a flood of memories? Maybe it\u2019s the tune that was playing during your first dance, or the anthem of a memorable road trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People often think of these musical memories as fixed snapshots of the past. But recent research my team<\/a> and I published suggests music may do more than just trigger memories \u2013 it might even change how you remember them<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a psychology researcher<\/a> at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Along with my mentor Thackery Brown<\/a> and University of Colorado Boulder music experts Sophia Mehdizadeh<\/a> and Grace Leslie<\/a>, our recently published research uncovered intriguing connections between music, emotion and memory. Specifically, listening to music can change how you feel about what you remember<\/a> \u2013 potentially offering new ways to help people cope with difficult memories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music, stories and memory<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When you listen to music, it\u2019s not just your ears that are engaged. The areas of your brain responsible for emotion and memory also become active. The hippocampus, which is essential for storing and retrieving memories<\/a>, works closely<\/a> with the amygdala, the brain\u2019s emotional center<\/a>. This is partly why certain songs are not only memorable but also deeply emotional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While music\u2019s ability to evoke emotions and trigger memories<\/a> is well known, we wondered whether it could also alter the emotional content of existing memories. Our hypothesis was rooted in the concept of memory reactivation<\/a> \u2013 the idea that when you recall a memory, it becomes temporarily malleable, allowing new information to be incorporated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hands
Memories are malleable. Artur Debat\/Moment Open via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We developed a three-day experiment<\/a> to test whether music played during recall might introduce new emotional elements into the original memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the first day, participants memorized a series of short, emotionally neutral stories. The next day, they recalled these stories while listening to either positive music, negative music or silence. On the final day, we asked participants to recall the stories again, this time without any music. On the second day, we recorded their brain activity with fMRI scans, which measure brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our approach is analogous to how movie soundtracks can alter viewers\u2019 perceptions of a scene, but in this case, we examined how music might change participants\u2019 actual memories of an event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results were striking. When participants listened to emotionally charged music while recalling the neutral stories, they were more likely to incorporate new emotional elements<\/a> into the story that matched the mood of the music. For example, neutral stories recalled with positive music in the background were later remembered as being more positive, even when the music was no longer playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more intriguing were the brain scans we took during the experiment. When participants recalled stories while listening to music, there was increased activity in the amygdala and hippocampus<\/a> \u2013 areas crucial for emotional memory processing. This is why a song associated with a significant life event can feel so powerful \u2013 it activates both emotion- and memory-processing regions simultaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also saw evidence of strong communication between these emotional memory processing parts of the brain and the parts of the brain involved in visual sensory processing<\/a>. This suggests music might infuse emotional details into memories while participants were visually imagining the stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musical memories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our results suggest that music acts as an emotional lure, becoming intertwined with memories and subtly altering their emotional tone. Memories may also be more flexible than previously thought and could be influenced by external auditory cues during recall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While further research is needed, our findings have exciting implications for both everyday life and for medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For people dealing with conditions such as depression or PTSD, where negative memories can be overwhelming<\/a>, carefully chosen music might help reframe those memories in a more positive light and potentially reduce their negative emotional impact over time. It also opens new avenues for exploring music-based interventions<\/a> in treatments for depression and other mental health conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Person
Music could help reframe negative memories into something less painful. Delmaine Donson\/E+ via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On a day-to-day level, our research highlights the potential power of the soundtrack people choose for their lives. Memories, much like your favorite songs, can be remixed and remastered by music. The music you listen to while reminiscing or even while going about your daily routines might be subtly shaping how you remember those experiences in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next time you put on a favorite playlist, consider how it might be coloring not just your current mood but also your future recollections as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yiren Ren<\/a>, Adjunct Researcher in Cognitive Brain Science, Georgia Institute of Technology<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yiren Ren, Georgia Institute of Technology Have you ever noticed how a particular song can bring back a flood of memories? Maybe it\u2019s the tune that was playing during your first dance, or the anthem of a memorable road trip. People often think of these musical memories as fixed snapshots of the past. But recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":38250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025,7,42,10,40],"tags":[885,891,886,860,4256,53,228,3009],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38251,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38249\/revisions\/38251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}