Memory Retrieval and Music Associations (featuring Disney music!)

After a few days in Walt Disney World this week, I have heard dozens - if not hundreds - of songs played around the parks that I can remember listening to from my childhood. After just a few notes of "You've Got a Friend in Me" from Toy Story, and the repetitive - and at times, maddening - "It's a Small World," I can immediately recognize these favorite songs, and I'm brought back to my memories of the rides these songs came from. And I'm sure all of us can recognize the classic tune of  "Yo, Ho! (A Pirate's Life For Me)" from Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Ride...

"Here, doggie, doggie!"

...These songs immediately trigger childhood memories when I hear them. But why do we recognize these songs so quickly, and why can we never forget them? Music association. A part of our brain called the hippocampus allows us to remember events years after they have happened. All of the visual, olfactory, and auditory elements from an event come together to form an "episode" of an event in our minds, and we are able to remember these elements years later. For example, hearing music from an event could bring us right back to the "scene" of that event. It's always nostalgic to listen to old songs and remember past-times, but music association is also another very helpful part of music therapy.

Music association has turned out to work great for patients suffering from memory-loss conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer's. According to the Alzheimer's Association, "many Alzheimer's patients can remember and sing songs even in advanced stages, long after they've stopped recognizing names and faces." It is true that hearing a song long after a circumstance can even bring back a memory of it. The Alzheimer's Foundation of America outlines different ways music can help Alzheimer's and dementia patients, and how a music therapist would go about treating a patient in their different stages of disease. Music therapy has helped many patients find lost memories through music association.

Like the first few notes of "When You Wish Upon a Star" immediately evoke memories of Pinocchio and general Disney magic, music from the pasts of memory-loss patients can help them retrieve some of those memories that they might not have found had it not been for music therapy. Music association is just one part of music therapy, but it does a great part in helping patients suffering from Alzheimer's or dementia.

The History of Music Therapy

After you have heard something about it, it is easy to realize why music would become a form of therapy: music is such a prominent part of communication in our world, and is a natural healer for humans. As mentioned in a previous blog, music has been around since the beginning of humanity, and is apart of every culture in the world. It is known that music was used as a healing method since ancient times, as "evident in biblical scriptures and historical writings of ancient civilizations such as Egypt, China, India, Greece, and Rome," according to Music as Medicine. Music therapy as a formal profession does not have a long history, but it is important to understand it to fully grasp what music therapy is today.

According to the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA), talk of music as a therapy slowly grew in the early 1900s, though the first reference to music therapy was in an article in 1789. Throughout the 1800s, researchers began slowly studying and writing about the relationship between music and emotion. One researcher of music therapy suggests that the World Wars in the 20th century were crucial in music therapy's growing popularity, stating, "Wars are considered to have a big influence to both bringing the mental illness to the fore, and in establishing strategies for treating the problem. For instance...World War I led to the acceptance of psychiatry as an integral part of medical treatment; World War II lead to the...use of music in hospitals." The use of music in World War II hospitals triggered the establishment of music therapy as a profession, when musicians would visit veterans who had suffered physical and emotional trauma. Music was used to distract veterans from their pain, but the psychological and physiological responses from the patients were overwhelming, leading hospital administrators to ask for more and more musicians. From music therapy's success in the 1940s emerged college training programs in various states across the U.S. to train musicians to use music systemically in therapeutic situations.

World War II strongly heightened music therapy's popularity

when Veterans recovering from trauma were positively

influenced by music in their hospitals.

The National Association for Music Therapy (NAMT), founded in 1950, created standards for university-level training requirements for hopeful practitioners of music therapy. Music therapist helped the vision and hearing impaired, veterans, and those suffering from psychological disorders. Research uncovered that music could help people recover parts of their brain that they did not think they'd be able to recover after a traumatic event. Because of the success of music therapy , since its founding, the NAMT saw its growth  "from a few dozen practitioners to thousands."  In 1998, the NAMT joined with the American Association for Music therapy to create the AMTA, which now has 5,000 members.

Since the 1940s, music therapy as a profession has grown to span the country, and is now practiced internationally. Through the years it has grown from a helper in recovery to a true therapy. Researchers have studied music's effect on the brain, and different associations and psychologists worldwide have concluded music's real ability to change peoples' lives; today, music therapy has grown from helping to not only manage the pain of a traumatic event or an illness, but helping the speech, memory, motor, and occupational parts of the human brain.

How Does Music Affect Us? - Emotions

         Most of us have an appreciation for music; we have our preferred genres, artists, and songs. We all listen to music for different reasons, depending on how music affects us individually: to make us happy, to relax, to relate to it in sadness, or even as just background music to our lives. Though we all listen to different music, there is something we should all agree on, according to studies by psychologists: the emotions that different types of music elicit. All in all, music affects our emotions greatly.

When you go see a movie, do you ever realize how the sound and music behind the scene are affecting you? Fast-paced, loud music evokes suspense and fear in audience members, while slow, soft music is touching and reminiscent of an uplifting scene. Soundtrack composers are very aware that music has the ability to evoke complex emotions in us, and manipulate moviegoers’ emotions with their music, but did you know that music can express distinct universal emotions?

According to the article, “What Does Disgust Sound Like?” in Psychology Today, there are six universal emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise) that have “tonal counterparts” that humans can identify. The article recounts the study of psychologist Christine Mohn, at the University of Oslo, who asked 115 students to listen to music samples and identify the emotions that correlated with the different segments of music. According to an abstract of Mohn's study, “the results show that six basic emotions are perceivable in musical segments previously unknown to the listeners.” Understandably, happiness and sadness were the emotions most successfully identified; most of us are able to identify the difference between uplifting, happy music, and brooding, sad music. With 115 people, it's hard to tell how universally true this study would be, identifying exactly six universal emotions, but there are many articles and studies that have looked into how music affects us emotionally; one of my favorite continuing blogs is "Why Music Moves Us" from Psychology Today, it's worth a read.

It is agreed among many psychologists and researchers that happiness and sadness are the most identifiable emotions in music; it is understandable that those emotions are the ones we use music with to cope with our moods. We listen to different types and moods of music for different reasons. In my research, I have come across a few sites that suggest using music to help elevate your mood. I know from personal experience that upbeat music, or music I associate with good memories, makes me happy when I need to boost my mood. People also listen to sad music to reflect their sad moods. In a recent study, according to an article from Healthline, people experiencing interpersonal losses (such as a breakup, or relationship struggles) preferred sad music over those dealing with impersonal losses (such as not having Internet access). All of this information is understandable, knowing from our own personal situations, and how we use music in our lives. 

"People who are going through breakups or having relationship problems 

prefer music and experiences that reflect their mood." (Healthline.com)

Because of how music affects our emotions, and how we use it to cope with our emotions, it is clear why it has become a form of healing through therapy. Music therapy not only helps people with brain damage from traumatic situations, but is known to relax and relieve stress in people dealing with anxiety and depression. Music has a powerful effect on our brains, and that is seen in how different types of music evoke different emotions in us. 

Music: A Personal Love, and a Clinically Recognized Healer

         I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not love music. I’ve been told that I was singing before I could talk. When I was a kid, my parents played endless cassettes and CDs in the car, showed me musicals from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and gave me a love of music that would last a lifetime. With a nurse for a mother and my love of music, I have considered professions in both music and health care - seemingly unrelated things - until I discovered music therapy. Music is entertaining, calming, and fascinating to many of us, but music is also a very established and acclaimed helper and healer for those suffering from addictions, brain damage, and many other afflictions that affect normal brain function. Music therapy is difficult to describe, but the American Music Therapy Association defines music therapy as "the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program" (musictherapy.org). In other words, therapists use music to improve the brain functions and health of someone suffering with a mental or physical illness.

I was originally introduced to the practice of music therapy and inspired by the recovery story of congresswoman Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords. In January of 2011, Giffords was shot just above her left eye, and received surgery in order to stay alive. Surgeons were forced to remove the parts of her brain that were damaged by the bullet. Fortunately, Gabby survived, but her brain function was poorly affected. Giffords suffered from aphasia, the inability to speak, due to the damage to language pathways in her brain (abcnews.go.com); language and speech were controlled by the part of her brain that was removed. Movement in her right side was also difficult, as the right side of the body is controlled by the left side of the brain. In just over two years, Giffords’ condition has improved miraculously due to music therapy. She has regained the ability to talk, comprehend, and walk, with much more ease than her doctors predicted in such a short amount of time. Giffords’ journey through music therapy is told in an article from ABC news: her therapist, Meagan Morrow, would sing songs to her, and “’it took a few days, but she started to give me a thumbs-up,’ said Morrow. ‘Then she would start opening her mouth giving a little hum. Then it would turn into words over the weeks.’ And through ditties like ‘Happy Birthday,’ ‘American Pie’ and her favorite, ‘Brown Eyed Girl,’ Giffords slowly paved the back road to language” (abcnews.go.com). Giffords’ story of recovery is truly inspirational, and inspired me to learn more about music therapy and its healing capabilities. But how does music really work to heal specific parts of the brain?

The use of music therapy is designed by how deeply music affects the human brain. Music is a human creation shared in every culture in the world. According to leading music psychologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, in his book Musicophilia, “music is part of being human, and there is no human culture in which it is not highly developed and esteemed.” It is true that most of us recognize and appreciate music, but it also greatly affects our brains. Our brains react to sights, tastes, and sounds. Psychologists have studied the human brain to see how it reacts to music, and the emotional and physiological results are amazing; “nothing activates the brain so extensively as music,” said Sacks. Music influences no specific part of the brain, in fact, looking at an MRI scan of someone thinking about or listening to music, brain activity can be seen in all parts of the brain. Other aspects of human life (language, speech, writing, sight, movement, etc.) are focused in specific parts of the brain. Music therapy helps people who have lost the ability to use these specific parts of their brains through injury or illness, by reworking those certain parts through music.

I’ve been learned about all the technical elements of music by being in choirs, musicals, and even playing instruments. However, the heart of music is therapeutic: not only is music a healer in times of sadness and loneliness, but the way it affects our brains has the potential of making miracles happen to those who thought using certain parts of their brain again would be impossible. In the coming weeks, I hope to further define music therapy, tell more music therapy success stories, show you experts in the field, what music therapy “sessions” are like, and more music history and its effect on the human brain.