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.