A research article published by Sarah Sauve of the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom on the 5th in "PLOS 1" shows that human memory for music may be resistant to age-related cognitive decline, that is, it can be better than other memories A deeper presence that does not fade with age.
▲Musical memories don’t fade with age
Sarah Sauve said: “You will often hear that people with severe Alzheimer’s disease cannot speak or recognize people, but they can Sing childhood songs or play the piano.”
Past research has shown that many memories are affected by age, but in Sauve's study, she tested the ability of about 90 healthy adults, ranging in age from 18 to 86, to recognize familiar and unfamiliar musical melodies. Ages vary.
The study focused on three pieces, including Mozart's Serenade for Strings in G major, which the researchers believed most participants would be familiar with, and two experimental pieces, one of which was easy to listen and the other does not conform to the typical melodic norms of Western classical music.
Melodic fragments from the Serenade for Strings in G major were recognized by researchers of all ages, with no one losing their ability to recognize the music as they aged.
Stephen Huff, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Sydney in Australia, believes that musical memory appears to be resistant to age-related cognitive decline, which may have something to do with the emotions the music evokes. "We found from studies of general memory that emotional processing plays an important role in sealing the depth of memory," he said.
However, the study only collected data on participants' cognitive health and did not provide detailed insights and explanations. It is still not understood how cognitive impairment or neurodegenerative diseases affect memory. Huff said this study just shows that using music as a "cognitive scaffold", that is, as a memory aid for other information, is very attractive in the study of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. .
Red Star News reporter Fan Xu, intern, Wei Yi
editor, Yang Juan, editor-in-chief, Deng Haoguang
