The research by Psyche Loui, director of Northeastern’s Laboratory of Musical Imaging and Neural Dynamics, offers an insight into how music changes the brain’s connective pathways. Photo by Matthew Modoono / Northeastern University
Can listening to the Beatles improve your memory? New research says music could only stir the brain
When Paul McCartney wrote “Get Back,” he would never have predicted how useful or relevant the song would be to music therapists.
The song’s comeback – “Go Back to Where You Belonged” – could also be a therapist who encourages a patient with dementia to remember a distant memory. In new research, Psyche Loui, an associate professor of music, tries to do just that.
Published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, Loui found that for older adults who listened to some of their favorite music, including the Beatles, brain connectivity increased. Specifically, Loui, and his multidisciplinary team of music therapists, neurologists, and geriatric psychiatrists, discovered that music bridged the brain’s auditory system and reward system, the area that governs motivation.
“There’s something about music that is this functional connectivity between the auditory and reward system, and that’s why music is so special and able to take advantage of these seemingly very general cognitive functions that are suddenly very committed to the people with dementia who listen to music “. said Loui, who heads the Laboratory of Musical Imaging and Neural Dynamics.
The original idea for this research came from Loui’s own experiences playing music in nursing homes. He remembered how people who couldn’t finish a phrase or a thought suddenly harmonized and sang a song he played.
“[The music] seems to involve the brain in a way that is different from everything else,” Loui said.
The researchers had a group of older adults between the ages of 54 and 89 in the Boston area listen to a playlist for an hour each day for eight weeks and then make a diary about their response to music. Loui and the team scanned participants ’brains before and after listening to measure their neurological response.
The playlists were highly personalized and featured a combination of self-selected songs from participants, ranging from The Beatles to Bruce Springsteen, and a pre-selected mix of classic pieces, pop and rock songs, and new compositions created by Professor Hubert Ho. associated. of music in the Northeast. Participants would then rate each song based on how much they liked it and how familiar it was.
“The most important lesson we learned from the music therapist was that there is no one size fits all type of music that works best,” Loui said.
What the researchers found was surprising: the music was essentially creating an auditory canal directly into the medial prefrontal cortex, the reward center of the brain. In particular, the medial prefrontal cortex “is one of the areas to lose its activity and functional connectivity in older adults, especially in people with dementia,” Loui said.
Music that was known and loved tended to further activate the auditory and reward areas. However, the music that the participants selected themselves provided an even stronger connection between these two areas of the brain.
“This can be the central mechanism of the changes that happen in the brain when you listen to music and when you listen to music constantly, persistently, and consciously throughout an intervention,” Loui said.
Loui hopes that this study, which is one of the first to document the neurological changes from prolonged exposure to music-based intervention, could have a significant impact in a field that has rapidly increased in prominence. The National Institutes of Health is currently pushing for initiatives around music therapy, and the AARP’s Global Council on Brain Health recently convened a panel, attended by Loui, to examine evidence for the influence of music. in brain health. Finally, the panel formed recommendations on how people 50 and older can incorporate music into their lives to promote mental well-being.
The ability of music to calm the elderly and people with mental illness is well documented, Loui said; but what is least known is how and to what extent music can help improve memory, cognition, and executive function.
“That’s something we’re working on right now, and I think there could be something about the fact that music is an art that develops over time,” Loui said. “For example, you’re listening to a rhythm and then you can touch your toes to the rhythm. This kind of process involves reward systems and the brain’s cognitive systems in ways that could be beneficial to long-term cognitive functions.”
Moving forward, Loui hopes to extend his study to older adults who have cognitive and neurodegenerative disorders, people who could benefit even more from the effects of music therapy.
“We’re trying to design these new therapies to take advantage of the rhythmic properties of music and the rhythmic properties of the brain,” Loui said, “and adjusting neural populations to the acoustic signals of music could be helpful in improving cognition. ”.
For media inquiries, please contact Marirose Sartoretto at m.sartoretto@northeastern.edu or 617-373-5718.
