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Music Memories Stored In Different Part of Brain Than Other Memories
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have long believed that the ability to learn and appreciate music was stored in a different part of the brain than other types of memories. Now, researchers in Berlin think that they have concluded that theory. Dr. Christoph J. Ploner, Carson Finke, and Nazli Esfahani at the Department of Neurology at the Virchow campus in Berlin, Germany have examined a man who has lost all of his memories but has retained his ability to remember and learn songs."
These experiments based on one or a very small group of individuals are all too prevalent in neuro research.
Maybe this particular guy remembered music/songs in a unique way. Maybe he's acting.
The full text of the research online here.
I'd be curious to find out how psychological trauma affects music memory. Nothing fucks with memory worse than severe psychological trauma other than traumatic brain injuries). One of the reasons, as far as I understand, that psychological trauma affects memory is because adrenaline and cortisol are hormones used to form flashbulb memories. People who are traumatized often produce these hormones for longer durations and this damages the brain. If people who have psychologically caused memory loss can still form memories of music normally, that would imply that adrenaline and cortisol don't have an impact. It would also imply that music can't form flashbulb memories.
On a practical note, this might also imply that sound memories (like the sound of a gunshot or the words someone spoke in a violent confrontation) are less useful in court if they can't form flashbulb memories.
Godwin?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The Summary links to a (somewhat useful) fluff review by the Medical Daily Web Site (and will hit the visitor with 37 cookies). Fwiw, readers at Slashdot may prefer bypassing it by going the Cell's Current Biology Web Site where they'll be able to find the Authors' Original Summary or perhaps the Full Text instead.
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
My grandfather has very advanced Alzheimers. He's been to the point for a while where he can't recognize family and doesn't have much to say about anything. However, in the 40's & 50's, he was a musician (played harmonica in a jazz-standards harmonica band). Through the 80's & 90's, he had a recording studio in his house and kept his music alive through multitracking himself. He definitely built his music into parts of his brain that haven't been ravaged by the disease.
Given a harmonica, he can bring back those songs, almost note-perfect.
I've also wondered if it's possible that music (or the ability to play) gets pushed into some sort of muscle memory rather than memory in the brain. As a musician myself, I know I can think about other things as I play things that are super-well-rehearsed. My fingers just somehow find the right notes.
Does this mean you store text in non-song form in a different location than text in song-form?
Since that looks like a binary decision: how much melody is required for the sudden switch from the one storage location to the other?
Memories
Light the corners of my mind
Misty watercolor memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then
Or has time rewritten every line
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me - Would we? Could we?
Memories
May be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it's the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were
So it's the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were
researchers in Berlin think that they have concluded that theory.
What exactly does it mean to conclude a theory, and how does this happen when your sample size is 1?
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
The MPAA? Be afraid, be very afraid!
I have always been able to memorize plays or poetry with almost effortless ease. In fact in my acting days at school I often knew pretty much all the words of all the parts (except for the acts/scenes that I was not involved in rehearsing) and I can still quote vast tracts of plays that I've not re-read for 20 years.
I also play the piano. Playing that from memory is a herculean effort with hours and hours of repetitive work required to get anything to stick. It also doesn't take very long for me to forget again unless I regularly play through something and I can get sudden blank moments when playing through something that I've played through dozens of times before without a problem. It's also not stress related as it happens regardless of whether I'm playing with someone else listening.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKgUq5dziEk
Does this mean you store text in non-song form in a different location than text in song-form?
The guy in TFA is a cellist, so I assume the music he remembers does not have a text component.
I have a somewhat different handicap. While I can easily memorize melodies, I can't for the life of me reproduce the "text" of the lyrics. My version invariably comes out as a paraphrase of the meaning of the lyrics.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
To prove that musical memories are actually stored in a different brain module then all other memories you need a double dissociation. It's not enough to find a patient who can use no other memories except musical memories, you also have to find a patient who can use all other memories but has lost musical memories.
Perhaps this is why learning a little jingle helps us memorize things like the alphabet, storing something in two different places as a song and as information. Works for the old tale-spread bards, too. Hmmm.
It might prove that music is stored differently but only a brain scan showing activity in different locations can prove that it's stored separately.
Also, brains are wired differently in each individual, to an extent. Sample size of 1 fail.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A sample size of six million should be enough.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Now that the RIAA has located the parts of the brain where copyrighted music is stored. You can now be assured that no starving record artists will go hungry because evil heartless souls have copied their artistic efforts into their memory and are playing them back without paying.
A government sanctioned brain scan will discover any music stored within the grey matter and charge the owner of said brain the correct licensing fees.
Those unwilling to pay will be directed to sit in the red chair for removal of copyrighted material.
This isn't new, and it's been well known for years.
Read the book Musicophilia. There's literally dozens of cases in which people can no longer really communicate or otherwise have some diminished mental capacity, but they respond to music by either singing or playing. That part of the brain seems intact.
Heck, this might even be one of the cases in that book. But he's a professor of neurology, and I believe that was published in 2007.
I don't believe this is a new theory, and it certainly isn't the first time someone has demonstrated this. Given how long I've known this, I'm surprised this is being touted as a first time we've confirmed this.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"Dr. Christoph J. Ploner, Carson Finke, and Nazli Esfahani at the Department of Neurology at the Virchow campus in Berlin, Germany have examined..."
A German scientist named Nazli...danger Will Robinson. Yes, I noticed the "L" in his name, but in German "li" is appended to words to make the the diminutive (so he must be a short Nazi).
He must have sadistic parents :-)
I often find annoying or catchy tunes stuck in my head- when it happens it doesn't seem to impact on my ability to do whatever task I'm working on. Then on separate occasions I might try multitasking but it all goes to $h1t. Maybe this article explains it?
We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
My wife is a Board-Certified Music Therapist, and she sees this sort of thing all the time. Often, when she's working with an elderly patient with advanced dementia, the patient will start to sing along to a song that's familiar to them (often a hymn), even though they might otherwise be completely nonverbal.
Music Therapy has been used by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords as part of her rehabilitation, and is often used as a treatment for a variety of conditions.
So, the key to preserving (backing up) important memories is to commit them to song? :-)
Could this be the source of Earworms? A song overpowers your music memory and keeps replaying. You try to stop it, but your brain is trying to "turn it off" in non-music memory so you fail and you hear it over and over and over again.
In related news, Hey, I just met you and this is crazy..... (earworm pass on completed)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
But it is /. so I'm sure y'all will forgive my divergence from topic at hand.
Music holds a particularly unique place in my life, and this may be the same for others; I can pick a track that I listened to from any period of my life and it literally takes me back to the emotional state I was in during that period of life.
Throw on some Tool or Bush and all I've sudden the "how I felt" in my teen years come flooding back to me.
Throw on some tunes from college, same thing.
It's a fascinating phenomenon and obviously it's all anecdotal. I wouldn't be surprised if it's related to how I listen to music; I'll listen to the same CD for six to eight months at a time and then I'll pick a new one and listen to that one for long period of time.
I think you meant to say that the theory was "confirmed," not that it was "concluded."