Royane Real
Music and Memory
By Royane Real
A few years ago my mother experienced a health catastrophe that left her in a coma for several weeks. When she woke up from the coma in the hospital, she had no memory of anything.
My mother didn’t know who she was and she didn’t know who I was. She didn't know where she was or she didn’t know why I was coming to see her.
Her personality had changed completely, so that even though she didn’t know who I was, she became a radiantly happy, kind person and was always very glad to see me.
While my mother was still in this state of remembering nothing about her identity and nothing about her past, she began to sing from memory hundreds and hundreds of songs that she had learned during her lifetime, starting from her peasant beginnings in eastern Europe.
Sitting in her hospital bed, my mother would sing songs she had learned in grade one and old favorites I had not heard in many years. After the song was over, I would ask her, “Can you tell me what that song was about? My mother would smile at me and say “I have no idea.” Her memory of the words to the songs did not link up to the part of her brain that could understand anything.
I would often sing with her in the hospital because singing these songs together became a new way for us to communicate.
My mother’s knowledge of the words to many songs had survived perfectly intact, even though at the time she was not able to understand the meanings of any of the words she was singing.
This experience made me think again about the mystery of memory.
Memory and music are intimately tied together. For example, you may notice that you too can remember words that were set to music while you might never have remembered those words if you simply recited them The music makes it easier to remember.
Or you may find that when you hear an old tune, you are instantly transported back in time to a period in your life when that song was popular. For a few moments you can feel what it was like to be your younger self, and you may find yourself recalling incidents and people you had long forgotten.
How can you use the ability of music to enable your learning?
One way is to compose little songs for yourself when you need to remember something. After you sing the song to yourself a few times, you will probably have a greatly enhanced ability to remember what you wanted to recall.
Music can also help you to improve memory through the so-called “Mozart Effect” The term “Mozart Effect” refers to some studies that show that if certain types of music by the composer Mozart are played while people study, they seem to have improved ability to recall it
Unfortunately, this improved recall does not seem to last very long after the music stops playing, but it can help you at times when you need to remember something for a short period.
There are other studies that seem to show that playing classical music from the Baroque period can greatly improve learning if the music is combined with a special breathing technique and method of teaching.
The experience I had with my mother in the hospital when she lost her memory made me realize that memory is even more mysterious than I had known previously. The part of the brain that can remember music can often survive intact even when other parts of the brain aren’t working very well.
It also seems that the part of the brain that understands music can help other parts of the brain work better.
Why not experiment, and find out if there are ways that music can help you in your quest to remember?
(The above introductory comments were written by Royane Real, author of How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative To boost your brain power, download it today at http://www.lulu.com/real )
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