Music In Your Ears

By Sam Mohammed

Movie music is meant to be emotive. Most people can recognise the soundtrack to Rocky as he climbs the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Or the familiar trumpet fanfare of the ‘Raiders March’ as Indiana Jones gears up for yet another adventure. But why does our brain associate film and music?

Scientists claim to have found the answer. Writing in the journal BMC Neuroscience, they reckon our ability to recall certain tracks may be due to the strong emotions that a piece of music elicits in us. If it is played alongside imagery that evokes emotions such as anger or happiness, an association will be hard-wired in the brain.

Previous research has suggested that our brains keep our memory in nodes, which it then connects with associated memories. Nodes can be semantic (with straightforward meaning) or affective (with emotional meaning).

Get ready to shadowbox

The scientists at the University of Hanover tested recognition of forty emotionally-charged symphonic pieces in a two week trial.

In week one, participants were asked to rate each piece of music on an excitement level (ranging from relaxing to very exciting), emotional value level (ranging from negative to positive) and emotional intensity level.

A week later, participants listened to the forty old and forty new musical excerpts to see if they could remember which ones they had heard before.

The researchers found that the volunteers were much better at recalling musical pieces that had been rated as very positive in the first week. Strangely, they also found that music rated as negative was also recalled better. This, however, can easily be explained, say the researchers.

“The (negative) results do not contradict the results of our study as it is perfectly possible that either negative or positive emotional stimuli could enhance memory performance, the results confirm our hypothesis,” they write.

So there you have it, happy - or sad - emotions can help you remember music. It must be why I can easily remember the rousing theme tune to Star Wars but still get plagued by the Sound of Music...

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