Memory for music doesn't diminish with age | Hacker News Reader

Memory for music doesn't diminish with age

nature.com

85 pointsgnabgib18 comments

Thematically related is the music of The Caretaker. It's haunting and beautiful and quite memorable. Check out An Empty Bliss Beyond This World[0], which is kind of a nice album for some melancholy reflection on age and the experience of dementia. His final 6-album sequence, Everywhere At The End Of Time[1], is less accessible, particularly the final 3 albums which are mostly noise (the whole 6-hour work was a terrifying listening challenge on TikTok a few years ago).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL998ajnjN4

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Empty_Bliss_Beyond_This_Wor...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJWksPWDKOc

And if you're looking for more like it, IMO the best derivative album would be "All The Grand Memories Of All The Lovely Years"[0] at over 11 hours long. I haven't listened to it all, but some sections do some interesting things ([1] as an example of a newly-formed memory in late-stage disease).

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tP43Q_VWyM

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tP43Q_VWyM&t=30573s

It's well known fact among those who have anything to do with retirement homes: really old people with severe dementia and other such ailments have no problem recalling music, their favorite songs, etc.

Isn't the problem that older people lose their short-term memory rather than their long-term memory?

Once it gets bad, it's everything. I've got about a 1/4 chance of my grandmother calling me the correct name at this point. She knows I'm one of her grandkids, but isn't really sure which is which.

For anyone else reading, take time to write down the stories the older people in your life tell. We did storyworth with my 102 year old grandpa. It was cool, but really just asking questions and receiving answers would've been okay.

We did it when he was 90, and happy now that he's getting a little demented.

I have a nice video of my mother a week before she passed, singing along with the YouTube video of an old song. Her dementia and stroke excised her short term memory but she knew this song about an old love of some sort. And she teared up while singing it... RIP, mom!

which is neat because I have absolutely no memory for music. I love music, but I could never recall a single song in entirety other than simple ones I currently sing our kid.

Clive Wearing comes to mind. He has a ~7-30s memory, but can perform and conduct complex pieces lasting minutes without interruption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Wearing

An ex girlfriend’s grandfather had Lewis body dementia and was constantly telling her that he could hear perfectly and entirely songs from his childhood, songs he hadn’t heard in decades.

Amazing that they’re still in there somewhere.

Are they really, though? Was he actually remembering them exactly? Did anyone check? Or was he just experiencing the feeling of remembering them? I can sometimes experience the feeling of "remembering" completely fake things in dreams which feel very real in the moment, even after waking up. I have to sit back and think about them for a bit and sort through whether they were actual memories or just plot points within the dream. I wonder if a similar mechanism could be in play once the brain starts breaking down.

Certain memorisation techniques leverage innate human abilities. For example, if you want to memorise a shopping list, mentally picture the items as waypoints on a route you know well, then when you want to recall the list, mentally walk the route in your head, visualising the items. Our ability to recall routes taken is probably as good as our music recollection. If I said to you to mentally walk the route from the front door of your childhood house to the nearest shop (or significant location) then you could do it easily.

This clearly taps into our ability to find our way back to the cave after going out hunting for food. Our ability to memorise the route home was necessary to survive.

I read somewhere that early language was more tonal. Closer to singing than the defined words we use now. So, perhaps our ability to memorise music was actually an innate ability to remember early stories or facts shared with the group? Again, leading to increased survival chances.

Should we memorize everything in song form?

Unclear. I have not-great memory, but I can hear music in my head very precisely even after decades. Like, the other day I anticipated the exact moment of a guitar stab and when the singer was about to crank it up a notch, in a random song I don't remember hearing since the 80s. But what I'm recalling is the audio, the specific waveform representation. I struggle to remember and recite lyrics, even to my favorite songs, and I'm very slow to memorize new pieces on piano []
So there's some specific memory pathway for audio. Unclear if that would trigger by just, e.g., reading a passage in melody form. Would the audio imprint?

[] Experiment: how fast could I learn a piano piece by first listening to one specific recording several times, to let the audio imprint in my memory?

I think it's less about memorizing lyrics, tunes, etc and more about associating certain musical pieces with specific memories, feelings, and life events (like a grandmother baking pies in November while she whistles The Beatles, remembering navigating the pain of a breakup through Taylor Swift, or churning through homework with the soundtrack of Daft Punk)

Side question: I'm curious, what is a "feminist music scientist" exactly? How does her research differ from other music scientists'?

Edit: It's actually a whole lab at her university, it seems. Their publications: https://sarahasauve.wixsite.com/femslab/publications

>How does her research differ from other music scientists'?

It gets grants more easily and looks good to the kind of people that matter when featured on university PR releases.

Apparently, it's a methodology. While I'm not delving into that, I notice that only one paper addresses feminism, and the others all look gender-neutral on the surface, and appear to be strongly focused on aging.

My own experience is that music recognition increases with (my) age, and I've come close to perfect pitch, contrary to some studies I recall (not as well as the music). With the exception of some wildly overplayed pieces (IMO!!) which seem immensely popular, I can hear others over and over. I suspect it's either the depth, lyricism, vivid emotion, internal complexity, or stunning perfection in simplicity (a la Mozart)

Someone posted a Ukranian hymn, which I recognized as a movement from a Brahms symphony.

My observations only. YMMV. Music keeps me feeling young.

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