What Alzheimer's reveals about musical memory
Music is stored deeply in our memory. We remember the hits from our youth even decades later. Many of us have stored in our brains the songs that accompanied us during good and difficult times in our lives – and even the music our parents listened to. It is an established scientific fact that melodies which trigger strong emotions become anchored in our memory. Music activates areas of the brain associated with emotions, as well as motor skills and perception. Research has also shown that music can improve the performance of our memory. The benefits are particularly pronounced for those who actively make music themselves. Studies involving musicians confirm that the two hemispheres of their brain are more strongly interconnected and that memory capacity improves.
For a long time, researchers didn’t know why even people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease can often recall old songs and the memories associated with them. It has now been discovered that the brain’s long-term memory for music is likely located in areas that also play a role in movement.
Memory for Music
How do we actually remember music, and what exactly does our musical memory look like? The study involves people with Alzheimer's disease to better understand the connection between music and memory and whether making music can improve brain function.
Music to improve memory
How can all this knowledge be put to good use? How does musical memory develop in the first place, and to what extent could Alzheimer sufferers benefit from it? These questions are being investigated in an FWF-funded research project at the University of Vienna. In the “Music for Memory” project, principal investigator psychologist Anja-Xiaoxing Cui and her team of researchers are pursuing a new approach. Their guiding motto: it’s never too late to make music. Seeing that even passive music consumption can evoke old memories, Cui and her team at the University of Vienna want to find out what happens when people with Alzheimer’s sing songs they have just learned. Can this improve their cognitive abilities, and are there specific musical elements in a song that they remember particularly well?
“There’s a difference between listening to music and making music. That may be precisely the reason why we’re particularly good at remembering music,” says Cui. “We assume that musical memory is much more procedural than other types of memory – meaning it has more to do with actively doing.” The research team now seeks to specifically address the central question of how musical memory works by focusing on people with Alzheimer’s disease. Their reasoning: in brains where certain areas responsible for cognitive memory have already been compromised, other structures need to be activated.
Long-term study: active music-making
For this four-year study, the Viennese researchers are collaborating with partners in Norway and Argentina who contribute expertise in music therapy and clinical research. The Vienna team also incorporates methods from psychology, neuroscience, and musicology. Currently, approximately 100 participants aged 65 and older and who are willing to take singing lessons for one year are being recruited in all three countries. The researchers expect that this approach will furnish valid longitudinal results. “We’re specifically looking for people who weren’t musicians beforehand to rule out individual differences,” says Cui. “And we chose singing because our voice is the most accessible instrument.” You don’t have to like singing to participate in the project and, so the researchers hope, benefit from it.
Initially, the participants undergo EEG and MRI scans as well as neuropsychological testing. Then the fun begins. “We’re working with wonderful music therapists who visit people at home and learn songs together with them,” explains Cui, who is herself a trained pianist. The songs were composed specifically for the project. Cui describes them as catchy, folk-style pieces that are easy to sing. “Since we know these specially composed songs very well also in musicological terms, we can observe the learning process in detail. This allows us to investigate which elements are remembered first, whether there are differences in remembering the chorus and the verses, and whether notes at the end of a melodic phrase are particularly well retained in memory.”
Lots are drawn to determine which Alzheimer’s patients begin with an intensive or a lighter phase, respectively, and then they switch. During the less intensive phase, they sing once a month; during the more intensive learning period, they sing twice a week. The one-on-one teaching enables the researchers to rule out effects that would be difficult to distinguish if the patients were making music together.
Interdisciplinary study
Over the course of the academic year, the research team conducts additional EEG and MRI measurements of the participants, as well as on a control group of healthy individuals of the same age, in order to account for the brain’s natural aging processes. “The EEG lets us distinguish between explicit, implicit, and procedural aspects of memory – in other words, what type of memory is active,” explains Cui. In combination with the MRI imaging measurements, the team can compare brain regions and brain activity. If correlations emerge in this context that also align with the memory reports of the singing study participants, “that will give us a clear understanding of the underlying mechanisms – that is, what kind of memory is at work,” says Cui.
While researchers in Vienna, Argentina, and Norway are investigating musical memory, a new study involving infants confirms that the brain processes music as early as at the age of three months and that this processing is linked to movement. It seems that Cui and her international colleagues are on the right track to finding answers to the questions of why we’re good at remembering music and why rhythms subconsciously make us rock our body. If the hypothesis that music helps improve memory is confirmed, the effect of music on the brain could be harnessed. Cui has the hope that “music could be a way to build a bridge to memories that may still be present but are no longer so easy to retrieve.”
About the researcher
Anja-Xiaoxing Cui conducts research at the Department of Musicology at the University of Vienna in the fields of neuromediality and systematic musicology. She acquired her Ph.D. in psychology from Queen’s University in Canada and until 2022, held a postdoctoral position at the School of Music at the University of British Columbia. Before pursuing her academic career, Cui studied piano at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. The project “Music for Memory” (2025–2029) is funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF.
Participating in the study
Those interested in participating in the research study “Music for Memory” can contact the project director directly at anja.cui@univie.ac.at
