Music and memory

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Countless times, I've woken up with a melody in my head that I can't readily identify. Sometimes I don't know how the rest of the song goes, just a small snippet of it. So it seems to me that there's a deep and recessed part of my (and other people's?) brain that stores things like song melodies that isn't typically accessible to everyday conscious thought -- yes or no? How exactly does music function, at least as far as memory goes, in our minds? Do we even know?

― Leee (Leee), Monday, 18 August 2003 04:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Once Upon a Time in America to thread!

― nnnh oh oh nnnh nnnh oh (James Blount), Monday, 18 August 2003 04:59 (twenty-two years ago)

My brain stores much music by emotion (actually emotion is like the brain's filing system in general). Sometimes when I'm feeling a particular emotion I'll start humming a tune and only later do I realize that the lyrics to the tune were totally pertinent to my emotional situation.

Sometimes I think of music as another means we have to sorting through information and associations, and it functions BECAUSE it's non-verbal and -literal. Sometimes I think listening to music is like defragmenting a hard drive: it sorts through lots of stuff, gets rid of the junk, and connects what was meant to be connected. Would that the results could be as clear...

Sorry, I can probably do better than that, but not at 1 AM.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Also Distant Voices, Still Lives to thread!!!!!

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:01 (twenty-two years ago)

"Researchers have recorded neuronal activity from the temporal lobe of patients undergoing brain surgery for epilepsy. During this study, awake patients heard either a song by Mozart, a folk song or the theme from "Miami Vice". These different kinds of music had different effects on the neurons in the temporal lobe. The Mozart song and folk song reduced the activity in 48% of the neurons while the theme from Miami Vice reduced the activity in only 26% of the neurons. Also the Miami Vice music increased the activity in 74% of the neurons while Mozart and folk music increase the activity in only about 20% of the neurons. Some of the neurons had action potentials that kept time with the rhythm of the music."

― geeta (geeta), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:05 (twenty-two years ago)

(i wish i was kidding abt the miami vice thing!!)

― geeta (geeta), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:05 (twenty-two years ago)

but that could have something to do with the historical/emotional associations those musics bring with them. one would have to study and infant to find a control...

IIRC the Miami Vice theme is pretty good.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:07 (twenty-two years ago)

and good for you seemingly!

― s1utsky (slutsky), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:08 (twenty-two years ago)

I had to rewrite an old paper this week, so I know -- because I looked -- that I don't have either the textbook or the handout-filled folder which would have had tons of stuff about this. I took a course on "Music and Mass-Mediated Culture," and a third of the semester was Muzak, elevator music, all those studies about "this song makes you want to buy strawberries," essays I didn't fully understand even at the time about "this is why this song stays in your head," and so on.

I want my neurons to wave around like a Winamp Visualization plug-in!

― Tep (ktepi), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:09 (twenty-two years ago)

isn't a lot of that muzak stuff just psuedoscience....like one of those dodgy wings of psychology, 94% wishful thinking and 6% induced results?

also in pre-literate cultures music WAS memory!

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, we spent as much time ... not debunking, what's the word I want? I've been drinking. Debunking's close enough. We spent a lot of time debunking that stuff -- having it debunked for us, anyway. By that point in the semester, I had started my David Lynch paper, and was no longer paying much attention to lectures, unfortunately.

― Tep (ktepi), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Even more than music, scents refresh/resurrect memories with massive speed cuz smell is the only scent that isn't processed throught the hypothalamus (like, um, the signal goes directly to the brain rather than sent through a processing gland like see/hear/feel sensations).

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:37 (twenty-two years ago)

(that's not to say that OH MY GOD YES! MUSIC!!! doesn't bring out memories or even sub-memory life-log entries long-since buried in the vaults of yr mind though)

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:38 (twenty-two years ago)

i like that the sound of certain environments, and also the vagaries of mastering and tape noise, as much as the stuff we normally include in the idea of "music," can trigger memories as well.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Being that music can be the background to many life experiences and a song can be heard in the present in the exact same condition that it was heard in the past, it makes sense that the nostalgia factor of it is so high.

― oops (Oops), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:45 (twenty-two years ago)

i.e. i hear the sound of my summer camp's rec hall in my dreams. not just the music playing within it, but the voices echoing off the beams and carrying off through the forest outside...

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I have strong memories of certain sounds too. I still remember the sound of a local nanny shouting to a particular wayward kid, which I heard as a kid while I was lying at the balcony.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Monday, 18 August 2003 05:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't mean associative memory vis-a-vis music, I mean the process of remembering music itself. For example, I will suddenly have a melody descend upon me (b/c of a very tenuous impetus e.g. some other vaguely similar song or I'll just wake up w/ it in my head), and sometimes I won't be sure what song it's from and usually unable to recall the rest of it, then some time later completely "forget" both song and melody. The phenomenon I mean, and now I'm not sure if other people have it judging by these responses, is like storing music in a box that only opens once in a while and which we have little conscious control over.

― Leee (Leee), Monday, 18 August 2003 19:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Two examples:

1. I woke up once w/ a song from Aphex's "I care b/c you do" having only listened to it a bare handful of times before, and again now I have no clue what it sounds like.

2. Sort of to debunk the associative-memory thing: there was a Charlie Rose interview w/ DMB, showing live footage and whatnot, and then I thought of the guitars in PJ Harvey's "Hardly Wait" w/o knowing it was her song. DMB and PJH have zero association w/ me.

― Leee (Leee), Monday, 18 August 2003 19:46 (twenty-two years ago)

NY Times article--"When the brain grabs a tune and won't let go"

From the article, by Jessica Colver:
The greater susceptibility of musicians may simply reflect how much more music they listen to. But other research has shown that musical training leads to changes in brain function and structure in regions like the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, an area located behind the forehead that is involved in the perception of melody. Some kind of self-perpetuating stimulus of these circuits may explain why familiar tunes like "Y.M.C.A." can literally become branded in the brain. Neural circuits for music perception also appear in the temporal lobes, which is involved in more basic sound processing.

― JuliaA (j_bdules), Monday, 18 August 2003 20:05 (twenty-two years ago)

I get pieces of songs in my head like that, Lee, and have to try to sing through it in my head to see what song it is. but then i can't remember what some of the lyrics are, and then it drives me crazy and I have to google the lyrics and then think--oh. duh. why the fuck was that in my head outta nowhere?

― JuliaA (j_bdules), Monday, 18 August 2003 20:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Another strange music and memory is remembering the order of mix tapes and the association of various tracks over time. It always feels odd to me if I hear Blur's 'Girls and Boys' NOT followed by Talking Heads 'Burning Down the House'.

― Bob Six (bobbysix), Friday, 22 August 2003 16:14 (twenty-two years ago)

if your life flashes before your eyes when you die, do you get a chance to see and hear all the things buried in your subconscious that you haven't thought of in years, in perfect detail? i hope so, it seems sad to have all that in there and only coming up randomly and almost unrecognizably sometimes.

― Maria (Maria), Friday, 22 August 2003 16:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I think they're working on it.

― s1utsky (slutsky), Friday, 22 August 2003 16:32 (twenty-two years ago)

they're testing it on baby seals who were raised on the smiths.

― amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 22 August 2003 17:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Poor seals.

― Leee (Leee), Friday, 22 August 2003 19:28 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

for ages I couldn't figure out why I was singing Justified and Ancient by the KLF. Then I realised it was because I'm coding up some HTML at the moment I keep inserting the attribute class with the attribute value "justify" into paragraph tags.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 12:46 (twenty-one years ago)

That's like how I kept thinking of that episode of the Simpsons with "Linguo, the Language Robot" and I couldn't figure out why and then I realized it's because I have to keep reading about sublingual medications at work. Not that that has anything to do with music.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 13:41 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

Last night before I fell asleep, I heard some music in my head, a mix of "Weight" by Isis and "La Le Lo" by AMT, with a bassline from some Tool song.

― Leeeeeeeeeee (Leee), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 20:04 (twenty years ago)

now that is music AND memory!!

― c7n (Cozen), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 20:37 (twenty years ago)

I associate Suburban Light with autumn in Columbus, Ohio, but that isn't the only association.

― youn, Thursday, 3 November 2005 01:12 (twenty years ago)

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