A tune for your thoughts
Music can help us remember in ways we might not immediately notice. Just think of how, in your younger years, you learned the alphabet to the simple melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. For Marije, music has always been part of her life: she started violin lessons at the age of six, later combined with piano lessons. Over time, her path led her to neuropsychology, where she found a unique opportunity to combine her passion for music with her work on memory and cognition.
A lifelong love of music sparks research
The idea for her PhD research came about ten years ago while Marije worked in the Medical Psychology department at Ziekenhuisgroep Twente. She observed many older adults struggling with memory complaints, and with her passion for music, she wondered whether music could help them remember information better.
Much like children learn the alphabet through song, music is already used as a tool to help store information. Marije asked herself: could presenting information with music support working memory performance in older adults, both those with and without cognitive impairments? Until now, that has only been researched in students, not in older adults.
Number, rhythm, and recall
To find out, she tested whether presenting information with music could improve memory. She focused on working memory, which helps us briefly remember and work with information, like when we try to remember a phone number.
To test this, participants listened to sequences of digits and numbers presented in four ways: spoken, sung with pitch, spoken with rhythm, and sung with melody (i.e., pitch and rhythm). Marije even composed the melodies herself, carefully designing them to see which musical elements helped memory performance the most.
She also explored whether a person’s musical experience or musical skills influenced how much they benefited from musical memory aids.
The power of a beat
The studies revealed a striking effect: rhythm made it easier for people to remember the digit-number sequences. This may work for both younger people and older adults, including those with memory problems such as amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Interestingly, in older adults and people with mild memory problems, those with more musical experience seemed to benefit more from these rhythmic memory aids.
These findings suggest that presenting information in a rhythmic pattern, like a beat, could be a simple way to help people remember information for a short time. As Marije explains, music may give extra structure that helps the brain process and store information. Future research should explore whether this can also help people with more severe memory problems, such as Alzheimer’s dementia.
While this research is still a first step, it provides important insights into how rhythm and musical structure can support learning and memory. In the future, musical memory aids could be incorporated into interventions or therapy to help older people compensate for memory decline and remain independent for longer.
So, in the future, the right rhythm might do more than entertain us. It might help us remember.
More information about Marije’s defense can be found here:
