Mike
Carruthers:
Why is it when you hear songs from the past, it brings up memories
of your past?
Daniel J.
Levitin:
What you're talking about in cognitive science jargon is the
effectiveness of music as a "memory-retrieval cue."
Dan Levitin,
author of the book This
is Your Brain on Music…
Music can serve
as a particularly effective retrieval cue especially if you're
talking about a piece of music that you associate with a certain
context. A song like "The National Anthem" or "Happy
Birthday" (which we hear all the time) that's not so helpful
- but a song that was played during that certain summer, then
that song is going to evoke memories specific to that time and
place.
I remember hearing
years ago that plants would grow better if you played music
and babies would grow up smarter if you played music.
There's no evidence
on making plants grow better. But in terms of babies, what we
do know is that the infant is already trying to process and
organize input from the auditory world from birth. And if you
can play a bunch of different kinds of music to the developing
infant, that will allow it to implicitly learn the forms and
structures of the music you're playing.
And playing an
instrument may make you smarter.
There is a little
bit of early evidence that learning to play an instrument when
you're four or five years old will help you to become a better
student in a variety of non-musical subjects.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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