Is music a memory booster in normal aging? The influence of emotion

Abstract

Age-related differences in episodic memory have been explained by a decrement in strategic encoding implementation. It has been shown in clinical populations that music can be used during the encoding stage as a mnemonic strategy to learn verbal information. The effectiveness of this strategy remains equivocal in older adults (OA). Furthermore, the impact of the emotional valence of the music used has never been investigated in this context. Thirty OA and 24 young adults (YA) learned texts that were either set to music that was positively or negatively valenced, or spoken only. Immediate and delayed recalls were measured. Results showed that: (i) OA perform worse than YA in immediate and delayed recall; (ii) sung lyrics are better remembered than spoken ones in OA, but only when the associated music is positively-valenced; (iii) this pattern is observed regardless the retention delay. These findings support the benefit of a musical encoding on verbal learning in healthy OA and are consistent with the positivity effect classically reported in normal aging. Added to the potential applications in daily life, the results are discussed with respect to the theoretical hypotheses of the mechanisms underlying the advantage of musical encoding.

Effects of familiar music exposure on deliberate retrieval of remote episodic and semantic memories in healthy aging adults

“…In concurrence with work on MEAMs, multiple lines of evidence indicate that music facilitates retrieval of content encoded when the music was played (Alonso et al, 2016;Balch et al, 1992;Palisson et al, 2015;Peretz et al, 1998;Wallace, 1991). For example, compared to silence, setting text to melody (Ratovohery et al, 2018(Ratovohery et al, , 2019Samson & Zatorre, 1991;Serafine et al, 1986;Wallace, 1994) or playing background music (Ferreri et al, 2014) enhances word recall. Binding of musical tones to words through singing can also help aphasic patients retrieve and enunciate words and phrases (Kasdan & Kiran, 2018;Merrett et al, 2019;Schlaug et al, 2008Schlaug et al, , 2010.…”

Impact of music-based intervention on verbal memory: an experimental behavioral study with older adults

“…By linking music and memory, different lines of research have investigated the efficacy of acute or focal music-based interventions, focusing either on perceptive or receptive activities (Ferreri et al 2013;Ferreri and Rodriguez-Fornells 2017;Justel and Rubinstein 2013;Justel et al 2016;Ratovohery et al 2018). For example, Judde and Rickard (2010) had adults listen to music for 3 min (with positive or negative valence, experimental groups) or white noise (control group) after the acquisition of verbal information.…”

Uso de la música para modular la memoria: Una revisión sistemática

“…Con respecto a los adultos mayores, se sabe que la memoria episódica es una función cognitiva que decae no sólo asociada a un envejecimiento patológico, por ejemplo demencia (Bohn, Kwong See, & Fung, 2016), sino que también acompaña el declive producto del proceso normal y saludable del paso del tiempo (Hedden & Gabrieli, 2004;Ratovohery, Baudouin, Gachet, Palisson, & Narme, 2018). La gran estimulación que requiere aprender música, aprender a tocar un instrumento, interactuar con otros músicos durante la performance musical, entre otras actividades, crearía mecanismos o vías neuronales alternativas que permitirían compensar el déficit cognitivo debido al paso de los años (Schneider, Hunter, & Bardach, 2018)Por ejemplo, un estudio encontró que los adultos mayores que tocaban con frecuencia un instrumento musical tenían menos probabilidades de desarrollar demencia durante un seguimiento de 5 años, así como también presentaban mejores rendimientos de la memoria episódica, que aquellos que tocaban con poca frecuencia o no lo hacían en absoluto y participaban de otras actividades (Verghese, y otros, 2003).…”

“…Los participantes que escucharon el texto acompañado de la pieza musical positiva recordaron más información, que las otras dos condiciones. Estos hallazgos pueden ser justificados por el efecto de la inducción emocional positiva que ejerce la música sobre la memoria (Ratovohery, Baudouin, Gachet, Palisson, & Narme, 2018).…”