Music & Memory

I’m riding the bus home from work. It’s October and it’s raining, the light of day is beginning to yield to the shadows of evening. I have wrestled with the daily internal debate about whether to indulge in the pages of a novel or just stare out the window. The latter seemed more interesting. My iPhone headphones are plugged in and I’m shuffling through the device’s music library, skipping those songs that don’t immediately appeal. 

Suddenly, on comes Matt Nathanson’s “Car Crash” and I am immediately transported through hyperspace back to 2009. I’m driving my beige 1996 Honda Accord through some back roads from Manchester, New Hampshire up to Concord. I can feel the emotions that I wrestled with when this song first played on my eardrums. The slight innocence and excitement that accompanied being a senior in college and the twang of heart break that still lingered at that time, suddenly felt present.

I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience, one where hearing a certain song literally transports your mind to another time. What is it about music or our sense of hearing that recreates memories and emotions so vividly? I’ve unintentionally recalled details about my past that I would never have remembered had it not been for the help of a song (not that they had been repressed for some terrible reason, just forgotten). This may not be a singular experience either, for me there are several songs that always reinstate a certain memory. Others recall a powerful emotion that I once felt when listening to the song or even because of the song.

There are surprisingly not many studies done on this particular phenomenon. Scientists do, however, recognize the connection between music, memory and emotion. Most of the research focuses on the connection between music and memory recall while studying or the effect of music on the recollection of those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Fascinating stuff if you have a chance to Google it, check it out.

There was one particular study I found by Petr Janata, Stefan T. Tomic, and Sonja K. Rakowski in the journal Memory (Vol. 15, Iss. 8, 2007). The article focused on autobiographical memory recall, the researchers using certain popular songs from past years to test subjects. The respondents reported that about 30% of the music they heard recalled autobiographical memories as well as strong emotions such as nostalgia (unfortunately the article was not free and I am cheap, so I couldn't read all the results). This is an awesome finding, but really just scientific confirmation of what we have already experienced.

There is a definite, scientifically proven connection between music and emotion, but in my humble opinion nostalgia doesn’t cover it. By definition nostalgia is a desire to relive a positive experience from our past. Our personal recall songs take that to another level by putting us back into a past scenario, good or bad, whether we desire to recall that memory or not. Emotions can be powerful, and when they are, our brains store the feeling for later use. When we hear a song that is somehow connected to said powerful emotion, that feeling or memory is suddenly brought to the forefront of our mind.  

Every time I hear Savage Garden’s “I Knew I Loved You” it still invokes the feeling of young infatuation felt during an 8th grade slow dance (I swear when I hear this now it’s not a planned listening). How awesome is that? More than a decade later I can still recall how I felt on that converted cafeteria dance floor. 

Maybe I can figure out how to harness that recall power, crank it up to 88 mph and make Doc Brown proud. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.