Music after learning increases memory, but only at the right emotion level

Summary: A new study reveals that listening to music immediately after an experience can improve memory, if the emotional response is correct. The researchers found that the volunteers who experienced moderate excitation while listening to music were better to remember details, while those with stronger or weaker emotions remembered only the essence.

This suggests that music can change the balance between GIST -based memory and details depending on how the listener affects emotionally. The findings highlight the potential of music as a low -cost non -invasive tool for the improvement of memory and therapeutic interventions.

Key facts

Moderate emotion helps: the detail memory improved only when the emotional response to music was moderate. Too much/very little emotion: strong or weak emotions favored the essence memory but blurred details.

Source: UCLA

Listening to music while doing something can make this activity more pleasant.

But listening to music after an experience or activity can make it more memorable if you have the optimal emotional response when listening to it, according to a new investigation of the UCLA neuroscientists published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

“We discovered that if the music was negative or positive or if it was familiar, it had no influence on memory as the emotional response that people felt while listening to it,” said the corresponding author and teacher of Biology and Integrative Physiology of UCLA Stephanie Leal.

“There was an optimal level of emotional response that helped remember the details of an experience. Too much or very little emotional response had to an opposite effect: worse memory for details, but a better memory for the essence of an experience.”

Scientists have been trying to separate the close association between music, emotions and memory to find ways to improve learning and problems involving memory such as Alzheimer’s disease and PTSD. Music could become a powerful, not invasive and even pleasant therapeutic tool.

The new study involved volunteers who saw a series of ordinary domestic objects, such as telephones, laptops and oranges. After seeing about 100 images, the volunteers listened to classical music for 10 minutes.

After their emotional excitation levels had returned to the baseline, they completed the tests of their memory for the objects they had seen. They were shown images that were identical to the images they had seen, those that were very similar but slightly different, and those that had not seen at all.

The participants had to identify whether the images were exactly the same, or new or different in some way. They also answered questions about their familiarity with music and how they felt when listening to it.

In general, music did not improve the memory of the objects of the participants. But some individuals showed a significant improvement, especially to recognize that an object was not the same during the memory test, but similar. All participants completed a standard questionnaire used by psychologists to measure the emotional answer.

A subsequent analysis showed that people with improved memory had experienced a moderate level of emotional excitement, so not too much or very little, whether listening to classical music that sounded edifying or gloomy, or familiar or unknown.

Those who felt strong emotions in any direction, in fact, tended to have the most blurred memory of the objects and better remembered the essence of the images.

Memory is often a balance between remembering the essence versus details. Gist -based memory allows us to forget some of the details when remembering the general information or experience.

This is important because we cannot and do not need to hold on to every detail of everything we find. But it is also important to be able to remember some specific details, and for that we have memory -based memory.

“We use a task designed to take advantage of GIST -based memory and details,” said Leal. “Music helped with memory -based memory, but only when the level of emotional excitation was adequate for that person.”

The findings suggest that listening to music immediately after an experience can alter what we remember. For example, listening to moderately exciting music after studying could help you remember the detailed information you need for the next day.

However, listening to music that causes a very strong emotional excitement immediately after studying could have the opposite effect.

The key is to find the optimal level of emotional excitation of music after a learning task can improve memory, as well as the information you want to remember, such as essence or details.

“Music has the ability to influence a part of his brain called Hippocampo, which is essential to convert experiences into memories,” said Leal. “We believe it should be possible to take advantage of that selectively to increase or affect memory depending on therapeutic objectives.”

For example, the use of music to increase memory for the details of an experience could help people maintain their minds as they age and help improve memory for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Under conditions such as anxiety and PTSD, using music that increases GIST -based memory to soften experiences that trigger a trauma response could help people face.

Because the optimal response varied greatly among individuals, additional research will help Leal’s laboratory to learn how your approach can be adapted for personalized therapies.

“In my laboratory, we are trying to detect changes in the brain and early cognition. Music is not invasive, low cost and easy to customize, and by learning more about the mechanisms that connect it with memory, we can develop treatments and interventions to prevent the disease from progressing,” said Leal.

“If the Federal Government reduces funds for Alzheimer’s research, the possibilities that we can develop this line of research in economic but effective treatments are very low, since developing personalized treatments requires many research participants to really capture individual needs.”

About this news of music, learning and emotion research

Author: Holly Ober
Source: UCLA
Contact: Holly Ober – UCLA
Image: The image is accredited to Neuroscience News

Original research: closed access.
“Adjust the details: the music after the coding differentially impacts the general and detailed memory” by Stephanie Leal et al. Neuroscience Magazine

Abstract

Detail adjustment: Music after coding differentially impacts the general and detailed memory

Music can effectively induce emotional excitement, which is associated with the release of stress hormones that are important for emotional memory modulation.

Therefore, music can serve as a powerful modulator of memory and mood, so it is a promising therapeutic tool for memory and mood disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease or depression.

However, the impact of music in memory depends on its characteristics, time and ability to cause emotional excitement. In the current study, we manipulate several characteristics of music reproduced during the consolidation of memory after coding to cause emotional excitement and impact posterior memory on men and women.

We discovered that the largest increases and moderate decreases in the emotional excitement induced by music after the entry from the beginning resulted in the Gist versus versus compromise in memory, with an improved but deteriorated general memory of detailed memory, while the moderate increases in the excitement from the beginning corresponded to the improved detailed memory, but the general memory deteriorated.

It is important to note that in relation to controls, music induced emotional excitation demonstrated unique impacts on detailed memory that are crucial to support episodic memory.

These findings suggest that musical intervention does not uniformly affect memory and has important implications in the development of personalized interventions related to music for people with memory and impediments of mood.