This is Part 2 in ThePseudonym’s series. Allow us to recommend taking a moment to read Part 1 here.
If I asked you to whistle your favorite tune, I bet you could with surprising accuracy. In a unique and elegantly simple experiment, the neurologist Daniel Levitin did just that. He found that recordings of random pedestrians humming or whistling a song matched nearly perfectly with the original recordings. This isn’t really too surprising; unless you’re tone deaf, this should be an easy task.
What’s interesting is not the accomplishment itself, but the fact that nearly all of our other memories are imperfect and are known to degrade or change quality over time. Even the so-called “flash-bulb memories” that are produced during significant, often traumatic life events change in content. Research shows that the intensity and the vividness of such memories stay intact, while the actual content may vary. While the memories may seem to be “etched in our minds”, more often than not, they aren’t.
So how is music so different that the average person can remember a tune nearly perfectly, years after hearing it? When you listen to music, information about the sound travels to the brain stem, where tones are differentiated. From there, neural signals are sent “upstream” to higher areas of the brain for processing. Specifically, the sounds encoded are analyzed in the auditory cortex for analysis of the context of the sounds heard. This allows us to interpret harmonies and continuous melodies. From there, the pathway leads to the mesolimbic system (specifically the ventral tegmental area), and the neurotransmitter dopamine is released.
Though dopamine is associated with a multitude of behavioral activities, when it is released from neurons in the ventral tegmental area, it provokes a reward response. This is the same brain area and mechanism that is implicated in drug addiction; ALL addictive drugs elicit dopamine release from the ventral tegmental area, as do other “addictive” activities such as gambling, eating and sex (though to a lesser degree). The connection here is that the aforementioned activities often create vivid, powerful memories. When mice were injected with heroin during experimental trials, clusters of cells became active when the mouse was in the vicinity of the place they were injected – long after being given the drug.
Though “musical addiction” hasn’t caught on in psychiatric (and popular) literature as sex addiction or food addiction has, they are all caused by similar neurological processes. Moreover, our ability to remember a song, and be transported back to a time and a place that we associate with it, is also a function of this system.
To respond to SeeSaw’s comment on my previous post: I’ve had many similar experiences. I once learned a piece by heart, but was completely unable to play it without the music in front of me. Though I knew the tune like the back of my hand and never looked at the music while playing, I couldn’t remember the notes without the script sitting there. I can’t help but think these facts are related, as music is apparently so closely tied to sensory associations.
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