Teo Costantini

English 1102
Mrs. Thomas
April 30, 2014

Musical Mnemonics
The beauty of the saxophone in Dave Matthews Bands instrumental #34 is
magnificent in and of itself. I have listened to the song countless times since I first noticed my
CD player skipping through twenty-two blank tracks between Pay for What You Get and this
hidden track. However, each time I listen to it now, I am instantly taken back to listening to it
on my iPod on a flight home from Chicago after a German language competition at the Goethe-
Institute. I was fifteen, and was alone on the flight. The flights to and from Chicago were my
first to flights alone. Now, on my way home, it was late at night. I had a window seat, and was
able to stay up for a while after take-off. I stayed up long enough to see an endless grid of lights
like a graph with millions of points plotted throughout and glowing, sparkling. This, along with
the combination of instruments in this beautiful song dedicated to a former member of the band
who had since passed made for a very moving, very overpowering moment in time. This was
not the first time I heard the song, and it would be far from the last time as well. Even still, each
time I hear it, I can see the lights from streets and buildings- not a cloud in the sky. I can
remember the smell of treated air on the plane. However, I have begun to ask myself lately:
Why does seeing a city lit up at night not remind me of this? Why does thinking of Chicago only
remind me of the wind, rude people, and soupy pizza? So I start wondering- what sort of
connection is there between music and specific memories? Why does this one song act as a
shortcut through my own memory road? What evidence is there of such connections
historically, and how can they be used for our benefit? I have many questions, so let us begin.
Everyone I talk to can name a song and a memory with which they associate it. Often, it
is a memory of where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the song, but
not always. This connection is often exploited with songs which explain a task or help to
otherwise memorize a series of information- I am sure most people (myself included) still recite
the ABCS when alphabetizing.
So I know I am not the only one. What a relief! Now, why does this happen? At this point,
I turn to the doctors and scientists who have been studying this type of phenomena. What do I
find? Endless jargon! Temporal lobe, primary auditory cortex, hippocampus, neurons, self-
reported memories, cognitive neuroscience? I am starting to get a headache like brain freeze!
Alas, I must learn these terms and their associations, so I begin.
First, I learn that the temporal lobe is home to both the primary auditory cortex and the
hippocampus. According to psychology author Kendra Cherry, [the primary auditory cortex] is
important for interpreting sounds and the language we hear. This seems straight forward enough.
Nearby sits the hippopotamus hippocampus, which Cherry describes as being why this portion
of the brain is also heavily associated with the formation of memories. So what is the
hippocampus? It was named after its resemblance to the sea-horse - from the Greek hippos
meaning horse and kampos meaning sea monster. Interesting. But what does it do that
associates it with memories? From my research through anatomy textbooks (and dictionaries
too, of course), I have found that the hippocampus takes record of events and stimuli to form our
autobiographical memories. It is also a part of a greater network of journal entries called the
limbic system. The limbic system is most associated with the origin of emotions!
Maybe this is the answer. We hear something, we interpret it, it makes us feel certain
feelings, think certain thoughts, and we store the experience in our own private autobiography.
This combination of hearing a song, experiencing an emotion, and recalling the event in the
future when the same song plays again- this is all beginning to look like a pattern.
I am no scientist, but I do know that I need more basis than experience to form such a
hypothesis. The experience of one person can be such a random, fleeting thing. However, the
combined experiences of many people of different backgrounds, identities, and upbringings; they
might just give me further insight. So I post a question to my Facebook:

For my inquiry paper I need your help!
Do you have any examples of songs which remind you of a particular memory, idea, or
feeling? Why do you think you make that connection? For example, "this song
reminds me of the beach because of the lyrics" or "this song reminds me of the day I
first drove because it was on the radio."
Are there any songs you use to help yourself remember how something works or what
something is? For example, singing the ABC's to help you alphabetize something, or
singing a song in another language to help yourself learn the vocab and grammar.
On the opposite side, are there any examples of something that reminds you of a song,
such as a phrase, idea, thought, smell, taste, texture, sight, sound, etc.?
I wasnt expecting many replies, but they came. Quite a few people decided, while
scrolling through their newsfeeds, that my question was worth answering. Perhaps they were
bored. Perhaps they were just trying to seem relevant on the internet. Perhaps they were curious
as to what causes these situations to occur to so many other people. Perhaps this connection
allowed them to remember how much we all have alike. I like to believe they read my question
and lost themselves in a familiar memory with a familiar song playing. They sounded so familiar
to me. Martin Eban, a friend of mine who Ive known since elementary school, said he heard
The One that Got Away by Jake Owens on the radio after he couldnt seal the deal [with a
girl he expressed interest in], and now when he hears it, it reminds him of the regret and
melancholy he felt. My mother, who uses Facebook more than I do, chipped in as well. A big
one for me, she states, is Brandy by Looking Glass. Always brings back memories of
camping at Hermit Island in Maine as a child. I can hear the waves crashing and feel the ocean
breeze when I listen to that song. It is a favorite memory for me. Remembering emotions,
remembering the sounds, sights, smells, and sensations trapped in these momentous memories by
the sinister sounds of songs, singers, solos, and symphonies- an occurrence which occurs all too
often to be but a coincidence.
According to Petr Janata, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California at
Davis, [w]hat seems to happen is that a piece of familiar music serves as a soundtrack for a
mental movie that starts playing in your head. It calls back memories of a particular person or
place, and you might all of a sudden see that persons face in your minds eye. And what about
why certain songs affect us this way and others dont? It would seem the majority of us listen to
music we like. Interesting. And these tastes differ person to person. Astonishing. And if you
were more likely to listen to a song then you were more likely to hear it during an event worth
remembering. This makes sense, because no song I have ever heard for the first time ever sent
me back. Janata took this into account in his experiment. Patients were asked to take an MRI
while listening to clips of music from the Billboard Top 100 charts from different times of
their lives. If a song triggered a memory, the patient would then signal the researchers. Janata
saw that songs linked to the strongest self-reported memories triggered the most vivid and
emotion-filled responses findings supported by the brain scan showing spikes in mental
activity within the medial prefrontal cortex.
Now, I believe, I more or less have a sort of answer to where these connections come
from. While you are living your life, you experience something which leaves an emotional
impression into your limbic system. During, before, or after the event in question, you hear a
song which, due to its qualities, your interpretation, or some combination thereof, forms a strong
enough impression to act as a trigger for memory functions. Examples to which many of us can
relate can be found in many films. One which I saw recently was Were the Millers. In this
movie, the characters all bond over the song Waterfalls by TLC. After a while in the movie,
Jason Sudeikis finds himself alone in the RV on the road after having deserted his companions.
Waterfalls starts playing from the radio, and Sudeikis turns it off, saying good try. It turns
out, this try succeeded in making Sudeikis nostalgic and remorseful that he had abandoned the
people with whom he had experienced so much. This is why we like making soundtracks for our
lives, because they create a sort of mnemonical device which reminds us of what we have
experienced. Finally! I was wondering how long it would take for me to incorporate my title into
my paper. A mnemonical device is something we use to aid in memory. For example, PEMDAS
Please excuse my dear aunt Sally is taught frequently to aid in the memorization of the order
of operations.
Now, there is a way in which we can use this connection. I already mentioned the
ABCs. This song is used by people everywhere to help them remember the alphabet! Well,
this type of device is no new invention. Ancient Mesopotamians used music to memorize
everyday tasks as well as important events- only a select few could read and write at that time.
Slaves in the United States during the 18
th
and 19
th
centuries used songs as a form of code to
remember and undrawn map of the Underground Railroad before and during the U.S. Civil
War. One possibly such coded song of the Underground Railroad was Follow the Drinkin
Gourd. The songs title is said to reference the constellation we know as the Big Dipper, with
the pointer stars making a line with the North Star. In this song, the repeated line follow the
drinkin gourd, is thus said to serve as directions to runaway slaves to travel north by
following the North Star, which would have potentially led them to the northern states, Canada,
and freedom. Even today, in some villages where there is no written language, history is passed
down through song. This shows that before we, as humans, were able to put our thoughts and
ideas onto paper, we could still write them on the proverbial paper of our brains with the ink of
spoken words.
From here, I begin to wonder if mankind can reverse engineer this process, in order to
allow the manipulation of the lobes and their components in a way which improves long and/or
short-term memory. The medical community could produce great steps forward if we could
unlock this part of the brain, at least to the extent to which it could benefit those with impaired
memory caused by mental trauma, concussion, disease, and/or age. Is such manipulation of our
very own organic motherboard even possible? Has modern science advanced enough to even
begin to put these pieces together?
Even without having professionally studied memory or music, I feel that I am on to
something. I have already used music so much to improve my own memory, as well as making
new concepts easier to learn through song. When I first started learning German, I immediately
started listening to German music. This led to me sitting down and analyzing the lyrics and their
grammar and vocabulary in order to help me understand what I had already memorized purely by
listening. Now, when I am writing in German and cant remember the case that an article takes
or the conjugation of a verb, I can often sing a song to myself and remember how it works. Yes, I
was fourteen and hadnt experienced any form of trauma which would hinder regular memory
functions, but I see no reason this cant be used for patients with diseases such as Alzheimers!
In fact, the medical community beat me to it! A study published in Neuropsychologia
focused on music-based memory enhancement in Alzheimers Disease patients. This was an
exciting find! In a previous study, they found that patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease
(AD) better recognized visually presented lyrics when the lyrics were also sung rather than
spoken at encoding. The study sought to further investigate effects of music on memory in
patients suffering from AD by making lyrics related to the daily life of an older adult and
examining how musical encoding affects several different areas of episodic memory. Patients
suffering from AD as well as healthy older adults studied visually presented novel song lyrics
relevant to instrumental activities of daily living that were accompanied by either a sung or a
spoken recording. In the end, the studies showed that both patients suffering from AD and
healthy older adults showed greater results from a sung recording than a spoken one. The
conductors of the study, which included Nicholas Simmons-Stern, a researcher at the Center for
Translational Cognitive Neuroscience, did point out that there are limitations to their results, as
the methods used can really only be effectively applied to similar scenarios.
Thus I have reached the end of my research. The experiences, the information, and the
experts have all given me the answers to the what, how, when, who, and where, as well as a
beautiful example of how it applies or so what? but they leave me wanting more. These
answers leave me wanting to know why? Why has our brain developed a link between music
and memory? Why is music interpreted in the same part of the brain where memories are stored?
Why does this matter? Why are humans naturally inclined to understand music and appreciate it?
The research that led me here failed to answer these questions, but that just reminds me of an
expression my grandfather likes to use, which comes from his grandfather. Those who purport
to know everything, merely serve to annoy those of us who do.










Works Cited
Nicholas R. Simmons-Sterna, et. Al., Music-based memory enhancement in Alzheimer's
Disease: Promise and limitations. Neuropsychologia. Publication. Volume 50, Issue 14,
December 2012, Pages 32953303

Martin Eban, Susan Costantini, et. Al. Survey conducted with friends and family.
Facebook. Web. February 25, 2014.

Mohamad El Haja, et. Al. Effects of music on autobiographical verbal narration in
Alzheimer's disease. Journal of Neurolinguistics. Publication. Volume 26, Issue 6, November
2013, Pages 691700.