Unforgettable film music: The role of emotion in episodic long-term memory for music

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Specific pieces of music can elicit strong emotions in listeners and, possibly in connection with these emotions, can be remembered even years later. However, episodic memory for emotional music compared with less emotional music has not yet been examined. We investigated whether emotional music is remembered better than less emotional music. Also, we examined the influence of musical structure on memory performance.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Recognition of 40 musical excerpts was investigated as a function of arousal, valence, and emotional intensity ratings of the music. In the first session the participants judged valence and arousal of the musical pieces. One week later, participants listened to the 40 old and 40 new musical excerpts randomly interspersed and were asked to make an old/new decision as well as to indicate arousal and valence of the pieces. Musical pieces that were rated as very positive were recognized significantly better.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Musical excerpts rated as very positive are remembered better. Valence seems to be an important modulator of episodic long-term memory for music. Evidently, strong emotions related to the musical experience facilitate memory formation and retrieval.</p

Gamma activity and reactivity in human thalamic local field potentials.

Depth recordings in patients with Parkinson's disease on dopaminergic therapy have revealed a tendency for oscillatory activity in the basal ganglia that is sharply tuned to frequencies of approximately 70 Hz and increases with voluntary movement. It is unclear whether this activity is essentially physiological and whether it might be involved in arousal processes. Here we demonstrate an oscillatory activity with similar spectral characteristics and motor reactivity in the human thalamus. Depth signals were recorded in 29 patients in whom the ventral intermediate or centromedian nucleus were surgically targeted for deep brain stimulation. Thirteen patients with four different pathologies showed sharply tuned activity centred at approximately 70 Hz in spectra of thalamic local field potential (LFP) recordings. This activity was modulated by movement and, critically, varied over the sleep-wake cycle, being suppressed during slow wave sleep and re-emergent during rapid eye movement sleep, which physiologically bears strong similarities with the waking state. It was enhanced by startle-eliciting stimuli, also consistent with modulation by arousal state. The link between this pattern of thalamic activity and that of similar frequency in the basal ganglia was strengthened by the finding that fast thalamic oscillations were lost in untreated parkinsonian patients, paralleling the behaviour of this activity in the basal ganglia. Furthermore, there was sharply tuned coherence between thalamic and pallidal LFP activity at approximately 70 Hz in eight out of the 11 patients in whom globus pallidus and thalamus were simultaneously implanted. Subcortical oscillatory activity at approximately 70 Hz may be involved in movement and arousal

Musica: Lingua Mundi

“The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; the motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affections dark as Erebus. Let not such man be trusted”: this is what one can read in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice. That music has always been an essential part of human life is beyond question and that man, at the origin of his existence, first sang before speaking is a view which most men hold. Music has been often associated with emotions and language, and most scholars and linguists agree that language stems from music, and that music is a primordial and archaic language used by primitive men to communicate and strengthen their relationships with their own culture and society. Quoting Rousseau one can read that : […]les prémiers discours furent les prémiéres chansons: les retours périodique et mesurés du rhytme, les infléxions melodieuses des accens firent naitre la poesie et la musique avec la langue, ou plustôt tout cela n’étoit que la langue même pour ces heureux climats et ces heureux tems où les seuls besoins pressans qui demandoient le concours d’autrui étoint ceux que le cœur faisoit naitre. Modern studies are trying to figure out why music influences human emotions as it does. Various researches empirically explain how music affects the human brain, mind and consciousness. Music is also said to have the capacity to blend and therefore to retain stable traces of cultural contact in a way that languages do only inefficiently; languages tend to undergo total replacement rather than blending after cultural contact, and thus tend to lose remnants of cultural interaction. And what about the relationship between modern languages and music? Is music still considered a language? And what relations does it maintain with verbal language? It is often considered as an imitation or expression of human emotions and believed to have a special relationship with man’s inner space rather than with rationality and concepts. Obviously, however, it must have some kind of link with language if one thinks that it has always been associated with it for centuries. Lacking the narrative and objectual structures to which one is accustomed in language, music frequently has an affinity with the amorphous, archaic and extremely powerful emotional materials of childhood. Another way of expressing the point is that music seems to elude our self-protective devices, our techniques of manipulation and control, in such a way that it seems to write directly into man’s inner soul. Why can people, affected by aphasia, sing or process music better than language? Why subjects affected by Parkinson, Tourette, Alzheimer diseases can sing or dance but cannot speak, walk or coordinate motorial functions? Why is language acquisition more flexible in children than in adults but this is not true with music which can always be acquired? Can one support the idea that music, as water, evoke man’s primordial forces and life? My intended work rises from these observations and intends to explain how music may be used pragmatically towards foreign language acquisition and, extensively, language processing and whether a critical or receptive period exists also for it. To tell the truth, cognitive psychology affirms that listeners unconsciously abstract and store structural information from the music they hear, thereby establishing longstanding mental representations that shape their subsequent musical perception. But what happens to the human brain when listening to music? How does music influence human perception? As Friedrich Nietzsche said “without music, life would be a mistake”, can we agree with him