The soundtrack to this story begins with a vaguely recognizable, pleasant beat. But if I stop writing and listen for a second, the music reveals itself fully. In Freddie Hubbard’s comfortable, lilting trumpet solo over Herbie Hancock’s melodic, repetitive piano improvisation, I recognize “Cantaloupe Island.” Then, with my fingers back in position on the keyboard, Freddie and Herbie fade into the background, followed by other instrumental music — captivating, but not distracting, sonic nourishment that fuels my focus and productivity.
Somewhere, I think, Yiren Ren is studying, focused on her research showing how music affects learning and memory. Possibly, she’s listening to Norah Jones, or another musician she feels comfortable with. Because that’s how it works: Music we know and might like, music that seems predictable or even safe to us — that music can help us study and learn. Meanwhile, Ren has also discovered that other kinds of music can influence our emotions and reshape old memories.
Ren, a sixth-year doctoral student in Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology, explores these concepts as lead author of two new research papers in the journals Plus Oneand Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience (CABN).
“These studies are connected because they both explore innovative applications of music in memory modulation, offering insights for both everyday and clinical use,” Ren said.
But the collective research explores the impacts of music in very different ways, explains Ren’s academic advisor and study co-author Thackery Brown.
“One paper looks at how music changes the quality of memory when it’s being formed — that’s learning,” says Brown, a cognitive neuroscientist who heads the MAP (Memory, Affect and Planning) Lab at Tech. “But the other paper looks at memories we already have and asks whether we can change the emotions associated with them using music.”
Creating moods with music
When we watch a movie with a powerful soundtrack (music created to induce emotions), what we hear guides us exactly where the composer wants us to go. CABIN In a study, Ren, Brown, and their collaborators at the University of Colorado (including former Georgia Tech adjunct professor Grace Leslie) report that this type of “ambient music” may also be powerful enough to change the way we remember our past.
The study involved 44 Georgia Tech students who listened to movie soundtracks while recalling a difficult memory. Ren is quick to point out that this was not a clinical trial, so these participants were not identified as suffering from mood disorders: “We wanted to start with a random group of people and see if music has the power to modulate the emotional level of their memories.”
It turns out yes. Participants listened to movie soundtracks and incorporated new emotions into their memories that matched the mood of the music. And the effect was long-lasting. A day later, when participants recalled those same memories (but without musical accompaniment), their emotional tone still matched the tone of the music heard the day before.
The researchers were able to observe all of this using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They were able to see altered brain activity in the study participants, increased connectivity between the amygdala, where emotions are processed, and other areas of the brain associated with memory and information integration.
“This sheds light on the malleability of memory in response to music and the powerful role music can play in altering our existing memories,” Ren says.
Ren is a multi-instrumentalist who originally planned to be a professional musician. As an undergraduate at Boston University, she studied film production and sound design, and psychology.
She found a way to combine her interests in music and neuroscience and is interested in how music therapy can be designed to help people with mood disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression, “particularly in cases where someone might exaggerate the negative components of a memory,” Ren says.
There’s no time machine that allows us to go back and insert happy music into the mix while a negative event is happening and a memory is forming, “but we can retrieve old memories while listening to affective music,” Brown says. “And we may be able to help people change their feelings and reframe the emotional tone associated with certain memories.”
Embracing the familiar
The second study raises a couple of old questions: Should we listen to music while working or studying? And, if so, are some types of music more beneficial than others? The answer to both questions may lie, at least partially, within the broad parameters of personal taste. But there are still limits.
Think of my description of “Cantaloupe Island” at the beginning of this story and how an old, familiar jazz standard helped keep this writer’s brain and fingers moving. In the same way, Norah Jones helps Ren when he’s working on new research on music and memory. But if, for some reason, she wanted to test my concentration, she’d play a different kind of jazz—maybe 1950s bebop with its frenetic rhythm and off-kilter pitch, or maybe a chorus of shrieking cats. Same effect. It would demand my attention and get no work done.
For this study, Ren combined his talents as a musician and composer with his research interests to examine whether music can enhance (or hinder) our ability to learn or remember new information. “We wanted to investigate music’s potential as a mnemonic device that helps us recall information more easily,” he says. (One example of a mnemonic device is “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” which stands for EGBDF and helps new pianists learn the order of notes on a keyboard.)
The 48 participants in this study were asked to learn sequences of abstract shapes while listening to different types of music. Ren played a piece of music with a traditional or familiar pattern of pitch, rhythm and melody. He then played the exact same set of notes, but out of order, giving the piece an atonal structure.
When listening to familiar, predictable music, participants learned and remembered the shape sequences more quickly, as their brains created a structured framework, or scaffold, for the new information. Meanwhile, music that was familiar but irregular (think of this writer and the bebop example) made it harder for participants to learn.
“Depending on its familiarity and structure, music can help or hinder our memory,” says Ren, who wants to deepen his focus on the neural mechanisms through which music influences human behavior.
She plans to complete her PhD studies in December and is seeking postdoctoral research positions that will allow her to continue the work she has begun at Georgia Tech. Building on that foundation, Ren wants to develop music-based therapies for conditions such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while also exploring new rehabilitation strategies for aging populations and people with dementia.
“These early studies reveal that music can either help or harm our memory, depending on its familiarity and structure,” Ren said. “I’m excited to bring together my lifelong love of music with my interest in human memory, because I believe the next phase of my research could provide valuable evidence to support the development of music-based interventions for mental health and cognitive function.”