February 24, 2017
Interview with Daniel J. Levitin, author of the book This Is Your Brain On Music
Mike Carruthers:
Why is it when you hear songs from the past, it brings up memories of your past?
Daniel J. Levitin:
What you’re talking about in cognitive science jargon is the effectiveness of music as a “memory-retrieval cue.”
Daniel J. Levitin, author of the book This Is Your Brain On Music…
Music can serve as a particularly effective retrieval cue especially if you’re talking about a piece of music that you associate with a certain context. A song like “The National Anthem” or “Happy Birthday” (which we hear all the time) that’s not so helpful – but a song that was played during that certain summer, then that song is going to evoke memories specific to that time and place.
I remember hearing years ago that plants would grow better if you played music and babies would grow up smarter if you played music.
There’s no evidence on making plants grow better. But in terms of babies, what we do know is that the infant is already trying to process and organize input from the auditory world from birth. And if you can play a bunch of different kinds of music to the developing infant, that will allow it to implicitly learn the forms and structures of the music you’re playing.
And playing an instrument may make you smarter.
There is a little bit of early evidence that learning to play an instrument when you’re four or five years old will help you to become a better student in a variety of non-musical subjects.
