Two recently published studies, led by Yiren Ren, a PhD student at Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology, explored the concepts of music as an aid to learning and its ability to reshape old memories.
“One paper looks at how music changes the quality of your memory when you’re first forming it – it’s about learning,” said Thackery Brown, a cognitive neuroscientist who runs the Memory, Affect and Planning (MAP) Lab at Georgia Tech, is Ren’s faculty advisor, and was the corresponding author on both studies. “But the other study focuses on memories we already have and asks if we can change the emotions attached to them using music.”
Music has always been a part of my life from the very beginning. My mom sang with the USO, and we always had music in the house (whether mom was singing or my dad picking something from his record collection). I have memories attached to music. Certain songs take me right back to where I was at a specific time…how I was feeling, what I was doing. That’s the power of music.
Music has the power to ….provoke, evoke, invoke …