Music on the Brain

Could the soundtrack of your life bring back fading memories? The popularity of Music & Memory programs in Australian aged care homes is growing. Studies have revealed how personalised playlists can re-awaken the brains of people with dementia.

Director of the Health Arts Institute, Dr Maggie Haertsch says, “I think that music is actually a human right. Music predates language. There’s something very primal about music."

Science suggests there’s more to music than just the emotional feel-good factor. Researchers from Stanford University in California have shown music may reduce the need for antipsychotic medication, often prescribed for agitation.

The right playlist of songs can penetrate even the thickest fog of dementia, which begs the question – how?

The fact is, music does something to our brains no other stimulus can do. When we listen to music, a lot of the brain is activated. From emotional centres to memory centres to movement - that helps explain why, even when much of the brain is gone, music can wake it up.

Professor Bill Thompson, Psychology at Macquarie University says, "It’s like a super stimulus. So much of your brain is involved that means there is more opportunity for the effects of music to be preserved in the face of damage."

One of the ways that music arouses our emotions is to tap deeply into hardwired responses to certain vocalisations.

Some studies have shown that without music, we would never have become the human beings that we know today.

Professor Robin Dunbar, an Evolutionary Psychologist from Oxford University says that music "is just fundamental to our ability to hold together large communities of individuals. Music is absolutely pivotal in the course of human evolution."

In the beginning, music evolved as a means of sharing emotions and powerful social bonds.

As we evolved from primate to human, there was a fundamental change in our brains that made us musical. As well as rejigging our emotional centres, it involved rejigging our motor systems. And that is why music is now being used to do something almost beyond belief – helping people to feel like themselves again. 

Music not only helps people living with dementia, but it can also have a positive impact on people living with Parkinson's.

Music is hardwired to make us move and to make us feel. 

Music is also a powerful tool that can be used to evoke memories. 

"Not only do we hear it verbatim over and over and over again in a way that’s unique and doesn’t happen with speech, but we also imagine music, so we hear it in our heads and sometimes music can even get stuck in our heads," says Professor Thompson. "For those reasons, it becomes deeply ingrained into the mind."

Music is so much more potent that words at evoking memories. As mentioned earlier, it arouses most of the brain. But in particular, it all comes back to our emotions and how emotion and memory are intertwined.

An aged care home in New South Wales has just taken on the Music & Memory Project. Staff have spent weeks preparing personalised playlists for residents who are living with dementia.

One resident, Betty, has sadly lost much of who she once was. She rarely shows any emotion or smiles at all – until now.

Erin Sharp, General Manager said, "I was stunned at the conversation that she had post-music. It was actually a coherent conversation, it wasn’t muddled. I didn’t expect that to happen!"

Betty grew up listening to music and she says hearing the songs now "bring home a feeling of happiness. I can’t say any more otherwise I’ll burst out crying. The more you love the music, the more you love the feeling."

"Even though Betty was crying, she was crying because she felt like herself. And if this program can do that, isn’t that a great link to the past," Ms Sharp said.

It seems like such an obvious thing. After a lifetime surrounded by our favourite music, why would we not want that to continue as long as possible? 

Music really is the soundtrack to our lives. 

Watch the full episode of Catalyst below:

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