THE NEUROSCIENCES AND MUSIC II I: DISORDERS AND PLASTICITY

Part IV Introduction

Musical Memory: Music Is Memory

Barbara Tillmann

CNRS-UMR 5020, Neurosciences Sensorielles Comportement Cognition,Universite Lyon 1, Lyon, France

Musical memory has remarkable features: Mu-sic can be used to learn and remember text;musical pieces can be recognized within a cou-ple of notes and after long time spans. How-ever, most research investigating memory hasused verbal and visual (static) stimuli, and mod-els of memory have been proposed mostly forthese materials. The chapters in this sectionredress this bias and further our understand-ing of the functioning of musical memory. Docurrent memory models apply to musical ma-terial? What makes music special? What are itsunderlying neural correlates and how do thesedevelop over the lifespan?

Schulkind1 sets out to examine the questionof whether memory for music is indeed spe-cial. For example, he compares the memory ofpopular music over a lifespan to the memory ofother materials (e.g., faces of classmates) and ex-amines the application of verbal memory mod-els to musical material (see also Akiva-Kabiriet al.2). While his review1 moderates some ofthe beliefs about the mnemonic power of mu-sic, it outlines various aspects of musical mem-ory, indicating its specificity, which are furtherelaborated in the following chapters.

The benefit of music for learning and mem-ory is observed starting in infancy (see the paperby Thiessen and Saffran)3. Despite its complex-ity, the combination of lyrics and music leads toenhanced learning of both lyrics and music—in comparison to when these are presented

Address for correspondence: Barbara Tillmann, Universite ClaudeBernard-Lyon I, CNRS-UMR 5020, Neurosciences Sensorielles Com-portement Cognition, 50 Av. Tony Garnier, F-69366 Lyon Cedex 07,France. btillmann@olfac.univ-lyon1.fr

alone. This learning and memory capacity ofinfants has considerable implications for the ac-quisition of complex structures in the naturalenvironment.

The specificity and mnemonic strength ofmusic is demonstrated in musical memory inthe elderly, in dementia, and in patients withmemory disorders (Samson et al.4; Vanstoneet al.5). Despite severe verbal memory deficits,patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), for ex-ample, show relatively spared memory for mu-sic. This applies to the memory of familiarmelodies (acquired earlier in life) and to thelearning of new melodies—either in experi-mental settings using short-term memory tasksor in singing workshops in residential homes forthe elderly. Patients with AD can acquire mem-ory for new musical excerpts (songs, instrumen-tal music), leading to a feeling of familiarity thatis not observed for text (stories, poems), even upto 2 months later.

In healthy populations, the feeling of famil-iarity has been shown to be reached relativelyrapidly, within the first few notes or several hun-dreds of milliseconds. Applying a method pre-viously used for face perception, Bigand et al.6

scrambled the order of short fragments of musi-cal excerpts and texts to investigate fast memoryaccess. Their findings highlight the contribu-tion of local features for music and speech mem-ory, while these features can be on a more locallevel for music. The neural correlates of the mu-sical lexicon have been investigated by contrast-ing familiar and unfamiliar melodies (Peretzet al.7, Groussard et al.8). Findings suggest atemporo-prefrontal network involved in famil-iarity, with the superior temporal sulcus being

The Neurosciences and Music III: Disorders and Plasticity: Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1169: 214–215 (2009).doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04865.x c© 2009 New York Academy of Sciences.

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a critical region. They further suggest couplingbetween musical memory and action (via innersinging).

Research efforts have been also directedto short-term memory of music and pitchand have investigated effects reported forverbal stimuli (e.g., word length, rehearsal)with melodies, the underlying neural correlates(Grimault et al.9), their development over thelifespan (Tew et al.10), potential deficits in con-genital amusia (Gosselin et al.11) as well as thelink to performance skills (e.g., synchronization)(Pecenka and Keller12).

In sum, research for memory of music isgrowing in the field of neurosciences of mu-sic, aiming to understand normal and impairedfunctioning and its articulation to memory forother materials. The findings on musical mem-ory in dementia and other patient populationsare promising for the use of music in cogni-tive rehabilitation and they thus join findings ofother research areas (see the symposium enti-tled “Listening to and Making Music FacilitatesBrain Recovery Processes”).

References

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2. Akiva-Kabiri, L., T. Vecchi, R. Granot, et al. 2009.Memory for tonal pitches: a “music-length effect”hypothesis. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. The Neurosciencesand Music III: Disorders and Plasticity. 1169: 266–269.

3. Thiessen, E.D. & J.R. Saffran. 2009. How the melodyfacilitates the message, and vice versa, in infant learn-ing and memory. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. The Neu-

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4. Samson, S., D. Dellacherie & H. Platel. 2009. Emo-tional power of music in patients with memory disor-ders: clinical implications of cognitive neuroscience.Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. The Neurosciences and Music III:Disorders and Plasticity. 1169: 245–255.

5. Vanstone, A.D., L.L. Cuddy, J.M. Duffin, et al. 2009.Exceptional preservation of memory for tunes andlyrics: case studies of amusia, profound deafness, andAlzheimer disease. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. The Neu-rosciences and Music III: Disorders and Plasticity.1169: 291–294.

6. Bigand, E., Y. Gerard & P. Molin. 2009. The contri-bution of local features to music memory. Ann. N. Y.

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7. Peretz, I., N. Gosselin, P. Belin, et al. 2009. Musiclexical networks: the cortical organization of musicrecognition. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. The Neurosciencesand Music III: Disorders and Plasticity. 1169: 256–265.

8. Groussard, M., F. Viader, B. Landeau, et al. 2009.Neural correlates underlying musical semantic mem-ory. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. The Neurosciences and MusicIII: Disorders and Plasticity. 1169: 278–281.

9. Grimault, S., C. Lefebvre, F. Vachon, et al. 2009.Load-dependent brain activity related to acousticshort-term memory for pitch: magnetoencephalog-raphy and fMRI. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. The Neu-rosciences and Music III: Disorders and Plasticity.1169: 273–277.

10. Fujioka, T., S. Tew, C. He, et al. 2009. Neural repre-sentation of transposed melody at 6 months of age.Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. The Neurosciences and Music III:Disorders and Plasticity. 1169: 287–290.

11. Gosselin, N., P. Jolicœur & I. Peretz. 2009. Impairedmemory for pitch in congenital amusia. Ann. N. Y.

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12. Pecenka, N. & P.E. Keller. 2009. Auditory pitch im-agery and its relationship to musical synchronization.Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. The Neurosciences and Music III:Disorders and Plasticity. 1169: 282–286.