Music‐based interventions. Experimental studies about memory modulation

DIAZ ABRAHAN, VERÓNIKA; LÓPEZ, MORENA; JUSTEL, NADIA

Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires

Congreso; XXXVII SAN Annual Congress; 2022

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

Music is a complex activity with great cognitive potential. However, its cognitive impactdepends on whether people are playing or creating music, regardless of their musicaltraining. A specific type of research involves implementing music-based interventions ona single session (before, during, or after a task) to improve cognitive performance. Forthe past ten years, in LINC lab we have employed music perception (listening to musicalpieces) or production (music improvisation and rhythmic reproduction) as interventionsto explore their effects as memory modulators. The aim of this presentation is to showthe results of several studies that examined the effect of music-based interventions onmemory consolidation for preschool children, young adults, old adults without cognitiveimpairment and adults with Alzheimer’s disease. In general, after the acquisition of verbalor visual emotional information, the different groups were exposed to music improvisation(experimental condition), music imitation (active control intervention) or silence (passivecontrol condition) for 3 min. We then evaluated memory through two tasks (free recalland recognition), by means of immediate and deferred measures (after a week). Acrossthese studies, we found the following pattern of results: participants involved in musicinterventions showed a significant improvement in memory. They remembered moreverbal and visual information than the control-condition groups, especially in the deferredmeasures. The emotional induction generated by the musical activities is the strongestidea that supports the results. Our findings suggest that a focal musical activity can be auseful intervention in different populations to promote memory enhancement.