Music and Memory
Image courtesy of majoringinmusic.com
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to perform a piano recital at Serenades, a memory care facility just outside Orlando, Florida. Most of the people who came were residents with different levels of memory loss. I could tell even in my brief interactions with them that they struggled with some level of impairment, but also noticed that when I performed, it connected with them in ways that I didn’t expect. Even though I was playing classical music, some of the people stood up to dance. Others became annoyed and told people who were talking to be quiet so they could hear.
Looking to understand what I had observed, I found an article by Dr. Anne Fabiny, Editor in Chief of Harvard Women's Health Watch, that offered fascinating insights into how music affects memory and mood. In her article she discusses how listening to and performing music can reactivate areas of the brain associated with memory, reasoning, speech, emotion, and reward. Researchers at the music and neuro-imaging laboratory at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have also shown that singing lyrics can be helpful to people who are recovering from a stroke or brain injury that has damaged the left-brain region responsible for speech. As a result, music is seen as a way to help treat people with brain injuries and is being incorporated in memory care facilities as part of therapy.
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