Choosing to Reset

Music can help people remember information and events by creating an auditory and emotional soundtrack that can be replayed to trigger a recollection. This is because music activates parts of the brain that are associated with memory and emotion, such as the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Music can also help people form new memories, as emotions can enhance memory processes and music can evoke strong emotions. 

Some studies have shown that music can help with memory in a variety of ways, including:

• Memory consolidation and retrieval: Background music may improve memory consolidation and retrieval. 
• Memory and reasoning: Healthy elderly people who participated in weekly classes that combined moderate physical exercise with music scored better on memory and reasoning tests. 
• Dementia: Music can be used to help dementia patients. Scientists believe that growing knowledge about music’s effects on the brain could improve therapies for dementia and other memory disorders. 

What you can do to use music to help you solidify information.

Play background music while you’re doing something new.

• Recent research has shown that background music may improve memory consolidation and retrieval.

Use familiar songs to help with memory loss.

• Remarkably, music therapy has emerged as a valuable tool to prompt recall among individuals with memory loss symptoms.  It’s not a cure, but it’s an invaluable tool in the therapeutic arsenal, enhancing the quality of life for those living with dementia.
• Music has been identified as important in the construction of autobiographical memories and thus for making judgments about oneself and others.

Exercise to music.

• Listening to and performing music reactivates areas of the brain associated with memory, reasoning, speech, emotion, and reward. Two recent studies—one in the United States and the other in Japan—found that music doesn’t just help us retrieve stored memories, it also helps us lay down new ones. In both studies, healthy elderly people scored better on tests of memory and reasoning after they had completed several weekly classes in which they did moderate physical exercise to musical accompaniment.

What we are doing as a group to use music:

• Monthly we are going to create a song list on Spotify that touches on one of these areas along with just for fun!

We are going to make background music lists, familiar songs list, songs that bring back happy memories, and songs to exercise to.