Music takes us back to the ‘good old days’ Bella Reeves A woman riding on the bus scrolls through her old playlists. She sees the title, pleasantly surprised, and clicks “play.” The first note throws her back into a time machine; she is no longer on the bus, but instead baking snickerdoodles with her late mother. A wave of emotions takes over and she closes her eyes; thinking of the time when her mom was still here, she hums along to their song: “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” Music. It’s meaningless without emotion. It can trigger memories that one hadn’t thought of in years, or bring a smile to a frozen face. “I’m not even sure why this song triggers a memory, but the song ‘Talking To The Moon’ always reminds me of when my sister graduated from high school and she had to say goodbye to all of her high school friends,” Anjali Mehta, a sophomore, said. “This song was playing when they all had their last goodbye hug.” Music has the power to transport us back to a time and place in such detail, but many are unaware of how. According to a BBC article by Tiffany Jenkins, our memories, controlled by the hippocampus and frontal cortex, are strongly influenced by the music we listen to. The first five seconds of a nostalgic song can bring anybody back to a moment they forgot existed. Essentially, there are two different kinds of memories: implicit and explicit. Implicit memories are unconscious recollections, like riding a bike or singing a song. An explicit memory is conscious and is intentionally recollected, such as factual information. Music can evoke implicit memories, which are tied to certain emotions; it’s the strong feelings that make the music nostalgic for the listener.
6 HIGHLANDER FEATURE
According to late British psychologist Oliver Sacks, “musical emotions and musical memory can survive long after other forms of memory have disappeared.” Patients with dementia demonstrate Sacks’ statement. In the documentary “Alive Inside,” social worker Dan Cohen explores music’s capability to rejoice dementia patients.
“Sometimes you remember when it used to always play on the radio and you’d just want to turn it off because it was so overplayed,” Anjali Mehta Sophomore
The film follows 92-year-old patient Henry Dryer, who is seen inactive and mute prior to listening to music. After listening to music from his youth, he was asked a series of yes–no questions about his past, in which he expanded on his answers with joy; he even began to sing songs from his favorite band at the time. “Henry has restored himself. He has remembered who he was and has reacquired his identity for a while through the power of music,” Sacks said. Music allowed Dryer to temporarily regain his youthfulness. He was able to feel the nostalgia and rediscover memories he once had as a kid. Television shows,
movies, and hit radio songs from one’s childhood can leave a lasting impact on their memories. “A lot of music that makes me nostalgic is from Nickelodeon and Disney channel. Specifically, Big Time Rush, I still remember all of their songs word-for-word because I was obsessed with the show growing up,” Mehta said. “If I ever hear one of their songs, I remember exactly what my life was like when I watched their show, when I heard the music for the first time, or even what episode it was from.” Music can light up one’s visual cortex, and songs like “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond engross people with nostalgia and take them on a trip down memory lane. “Music nostalgia is when you listen to a song, it doesn’t even have to be that long ago, you just listen to it and can remember and feel exactly what you were like when you first listened to it,” Mehta said. When a song is first heard, it triggers the auditory cortex, which processes the song one is listening to into one coherent piece of information. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), “many researchers believe that music is encoded in the brain by the perceptual memory system, which organizes auditory information into melodies and rhythms, rather than by the semantic memory system, which encodes meaning.” When Tej Tummala, a junior, was studying for the SAT, he would listen to music to keep him focused; now, after taking the test, when he listens to a certain song from his SAT studying playlist, it reminds him of the time he spent intensely studying. “A prominent memory I have when I listen to ‘Lose Yourself ’ by Eminem is taking the SAT because I listened to that song dozens of times before I took the test,” Tummala said. We remember these melodies because they evoke an important time or event in our life. Studies show that most adults feel nostalgic when listening to the music they listened to as a teenager. This is because during that age, you are constantly searching for a sense of identity. This formative period is what evokes strong emotions and vivid memories, further making the music they once listened to very