Abstract
Music is a powerful medium that influences our emotions and memories. Neuroscience research has demonstrated music’s ability to engage brain regions associated with emotion, reward, motivation, and autobiographical memory. While music's role in modulating emotions has been explored extensively, our study investigates whether music can alter the emotional content of memories. Building on the theory that memories can be updated upon retrieval, we tested whether introducing emotional music during memory recollection might introduce false emotional elements into the original memory trace. We developed a 3-day episodic memory task with separate encoding, recollection, and retrieval phases. Our primary hypothesis was that emotional music played during memory recollection would increase the likelihood of introducing novel emotional components into the original memory. Behavioral findings revealed two key outcomes: 1) participants exposed to music during memory recollection were more likely to incorporate novel emotional components congruent with the paired music valence, and 2) memories retrieved 1 day later exhibited a stronger emotional tone than the original memory, congruent with the valence of the music paired during the previous day’s recollection. Furthermore, fMRI results revealed altered neural engagement during story recollection with music, including the amygdala, anterior hippocampus, and inferior parietal lobule. Enhanced connectivity between the amygdala and other brain regions, including the frontal and visual cortex, was observed during recollection with music, potentially contributing to more emotionally charged story reconstructions. These findings illuminate the interplay between music, emotion, and memory, offering insights into the consequences of infusing emotional music into memory recollection processes.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The data and materials for the experiment are available at https://osf.io/yr5em.
Code availability
The code and scripts of the experiment can be found at https://osf.io/yr5em.
References
Alluri, V., Toiviainen, P., Jääskeläinen, I. P., Glerean, E., Sams, M., & Brattico, E. (2012). Large-scale brain networks emerge from dynamic processing of musical timbre, key and rhythm. NeuroImage, 59(4), 3677–3689. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.11.019
Belfi, A. M., Karlan, B., & Tranel, D. (2016). Music evokes vivid autobiographical memories. Memory, 24(7), 979–989. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2015.1061012
Bellier, L., Llorens, A., Marciano, D., Gunduz, A., Schalk, G., Brunner, P., & Knight, R. T. (2023). Music can be reconstructed from human auditory cortex activity using nonlinear decoding models. PLOS Biology, 21(8), e3002176. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002176
Boltz, M. G. (2004). The cognitive processing of film and musical soundtracks. Memory & Cognition, 32(7), 1194–1205. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196892
Bouhuys, A. L., Geerts, E., & Gordijn, M. C. M. (1999). Depressed Patients’ Perceptions of Facial Emotions in Depressed and Remitted States Are Associated with Relapse: A Longitudinal Study. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 187(10), 595–602. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-199910000-00002
Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (1999). Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW): Instruction Manual and Affective Ratings. Technical Report C-1, The Center for Research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida, 49.
Cohen, A. J. (2001). Music as a source of emotion in film. In P. N. Juslin & J. A. Sloboda (Eds.), Music and emotion: Theory and research (pp. 249–272). Oxford University Press.
Cohen, A. J. (2015). Congruence-Association Model and Experiments in Film Music: Toward Interdisciplinary Collaboration. Music and the Moving Image, 8(2), 5–24. https://doi.org/10.5406/musimoviimag.8.2.0005
Cox, R. W. (1996). AFNI: Software for analysis and visualization of functional magnetic resonance neuroimages. Computers and Biomedical Research, 29(3), 162–173.
Ding, Y., Zhang, Y., Zhou, W., Ling, Z., Huang, J., Hong, B., & Wang, X. (2019). Neural correlates of music listening and recall in the human brain. Journal of Neuroscience, 39(41), 8112–8123. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1468-18.2019
Dodds, P. S., Clark, E. M., Desu, S., Frank, M. R., Reagan, A. J., Williams, J. R., Mitchell, L., Harris, K. D., Kloumann, I. M., Bagrow, J. P., Megerdoomian, K., McMahon, M. T., Tivnan, B. F., & Danforth, C. M. (2015). Human language reveals a universal positivity bias. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(8), 2389–2394. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1411678112
Eerola, T., & Vuoskoski, J. (2011). A comparison of the discrete and dimensional models of emotion in music. Psychology of Music, 39(1), 18–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735610362821
Eerola, T., Vuoskoski, J. K., Peltola, H.-R., Putkinen, V., & Schäfer, K. (2018). An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music. Physics of Life Reviews, 25, 100–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2017.11.016
Eldar, E., Ganor, O., Admon, R., Bleich, A., & Hendler, T. (2007). Feeling the real world: Limbic response to music depends on related content. Cerebral Cortex, 17(12), 2828–2840. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhm011
Erk, S., von Kalckreuth, A., & Walter, H. (2010). Neural long-term effects of emotion regulation on episodic memory processes. Neuropsychologia, 48(4), 989–996. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.11.022
Eschrich, S., Münte, T. F., & Altenmüller, E. O. (2008). Unforgettable film music: The role of emotion in episodic long-term memory for music. BMC Neuroscience, 9, 48. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2202-9-48
Evers, S. (2023). The Cerebellum in Musicology: A Narrative Review. The Cerebellum. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12311-023-01594-6
Fernandez, N. B., Trost, W. J., & Vuilleumier, P. (2019). Brain networks mediating the influence of background music on selective attention. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 14(12), 1441–1452. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa004
Forcato, C., Burgos, V. L., Argibay, P. F., Molina, V. A., Pedreira, M. E., & Maldonado, H. (2007). Reconsolidation of declarative memory in humans. Learning & Memory, 14(4), 295–303. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.486107
Frank, D. W., Costa, V. D., Averbeck, B. B., & Sabatinelli, D. (2019). Directional interconnectivity of the human amygdala, fusiform gyrus, and orbitofrontal cortex in emotional scene perception. Journal of Neurophysiology, 122(4), 1530–1537. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00780.2018
Gasquoine, P. G. (2014). Contributions of the Insula to Cognition and Emotion. Neuropsychology Review, 24(2), 77–87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11065-014-9246-9
Gilboa-Schechtman, E., Ben-Artzi, E., Jeczemien, P., Marom, S., & Hermesh, H. (2004). Depression impairs the ability to ignore the emotional aspects of facial expressions: Evidence from the Garner task. Cognition and Emotion, 18(2), 209–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930341000176a
Gisquet-Verrier, P., & Riccio, D. C. (2012). Memory reactivation effects independent of reconsolidation. Learning & Memory, 19(9), 401–409. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.026054.112
Gold, B. P., Pearce, M. T., McIntosh, A. R., Chang, C., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. J. (2023). Auditory and reward structures reflect the pleasure of musical expectancies during naturalistic listening. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 17. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2023.1209398
Hayes, J. P., Morey, R. A., Petty, C. M., Seth, S., Smoski, M. J., Mccarthy, G., & LaBar, K. S. (2010). Staying Cool when Things Get Hot: Emotion Regulation Modulates Neural Mechanisms of Memory Encoding. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2010.00230
Herff, S. A., McConnell, S., Ji, J. L., & Prince, J. B. (2022). Eye Closure Interacts with Music to Influence Vividness and Content of Directed Imagery. Music & Science, 5, 20592043221142710. https://doi.org/10.1177/20592043221142711
Herrington, J. D., Taylor, J. M., Grupe, D. W., Curby, K. M., & Schultz, R. T. (2011). Bidirectional communication between amygdala and fusiform gyrus during facial recognition. NeuroImage, 56(4), 2348–2355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.03.072
Hooker, C. I., Verosky, S. C., Germine, L. T., Knight, R. T., & D’Esposito, M. (2010). Neural activity during social signal perception correlates with self-reported empathy. Brain Research, 1308, 100–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2009.10.006
Hupbach, A., Gomez, R., Hardt, O., & Nadel, L. (2007). Reconsolidation of episodic memories: A subtle reminder triggers integration of new information. Learning & Memory, 14(1–2), 47–53. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.365707
Inman, C. S., Manns, J. R., Bijanki, K. R., Bass, D. I., Hamann, S., Drane, D. L., Fasano, R. E., Kovach, C. K., Gross, R. E., & Willie, J. T. (2018). Direct electrical stimulation of the amygdala enhances declarative memory in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(1), 98–103. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1714058114
Jakubowski, K., & Ghosh, A. (2021). Music-evoked autobiographical memories in everyday life. Psychology of Music, 49(3), 649–666. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735619888803
Jakubowski, K., Walker, D., & Wang, H. (2023). Music cues impact the emotionality but not richness of episodic memory retrieval. Memory, 31(10), 1259–1268. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2023.2256055
Jäncke, L. (2008). Music, memory and emotion. Journal of Biology, 7(6), 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/jbiol82
Jiang, J., Wagner, A. D., & Egner, T. (2018). Integrated externally and internally generated task predictions jointly guide cognitive control in prefrontal cortex. eLife, 7, e39497. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.39497
Joormann, J., Teachman, B. A., & Gotlib, I. H. (2009). Sadder and less accurate? False memory for negative material in depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118(2), 412–417. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015621
Juslin, P. N. (2019). Musical Emotions Explained: Unlocking the Secrets of Musical Affect. Oxford University Press.
Juslin, P. N., & Laukka, P. (2003). Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: Different channels, same code? Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 770–814. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.770
Juslin, P. N., & Sloboda, J. A. (Eds.). (2001). Music and emotion: Theory and research (pp. viii, 487). Oxford University Press.
Koelsch, S. (2009). A Neuroscientific Perspective on Music Therapy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169(1), 374–384. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04592.x
Koelsch, S. (2010). Towards a neural basis of music-evoked emotions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(3), 131–137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.01.002
Koelsch, S. (2014). Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3666
Koelsch, S., Fritz, T., Cramon, V., & D. Y., Müller, K., & Friederici, A. D. (2006). Investigating emotion with music: An fMRI study. Human Brain Mapping, 27(3), 239–250. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20180
Kogler, L., Müller, V. I., Werminghausen, E., Eickhoff, S. B., & Derntl, B. (2020). Do I feel or do I know? Neuroimaging meta-analyses on the multiple facets of empathy. Cortex, 129, 341–355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.04.031
Landis-Shack, N., Heinz, A. J., & Bonn-Miller, M. O. (2017). Music therapy for posttraumatic stress in adults: A theoretical review. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 27(4), 334–342. https://doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000192
Lerner, Y., Papo, D., Zhdanov, A., Belozersky, L., & Hendler, T. (2009). Eyes wide shut: Amygdala mediates eyes-closed effect on emotional experience with music. PLoS ONE, 4(7), e6230–e6230.
Li, W., Qin, W., Liu, H., Fan, L., Wang, J., Jiang, T., & Yu, C. (2013). Subregions of the human superior frontal gyrus and their connections. NeuroImage, 78, 46–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.04.011
Loftus, E. F., Miller, D. G., & Burns, H. J. (1978). Semantic integration of verbal information into a visual memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4(1), 19–31. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.4.1.19
Mado Proverbio, A., Lozano Nasi, V., Alessandra Arcari, L., De Benedetto, F., Guardamagna, M., Gazzola, M., & Zani, A. (2015). The effect of background music on episodic memory and autonomic responses: Listening to emotionally touching music enhances facial memory capacity. Scientific Reports, 5(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep15219
Maratos, A., Gold, C., Wang, X., & Crawford, M. (2008). Music therapy for depression. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 11, CD004517. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD004517.pub3
Marks, D. F. (1973). Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. https://doi.org/10.1037/t05959-000
Marshall, S. K., & Cohen, A. J. (1988). Effects of Musical Soundtracks on Attitudes toward Animated Geometric Figures. Music Perception, 6(1), 95–112. https://doi.org/10.2307/40285417
Matt, G. E., Vázquez, C., & Campbell, W. K. (1992). Mood-congruent recall of affectively toned stimuli: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 12(2), 227–255. https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-7358(92)90116-P
McLaren, D. G., Ries, M. L., Xu, G., & Johnson, S. C. (2012). A generalized form of context-dependent psychophysiological interactions (gPPI): A comparison to standard approaches. NeuroImage, 61(4), 1277–1286. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.03.068
Mezulis, A., Abramson, L., Hyde, J., & Hankin, B. (2004). Is There a Universal Positivity Bias in Attributions? A Meta-Analytic Review of Individual, Developmental, and Cultural Differences in the Self-Serving Attributional Bias. Psychological Bulletin, 130(5), 711–747. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.5.711
Millet, B., Chattah, J., & Ahn, S. (2021). Soundtrack design: The impact of music on visual attention and affective responses. Applied Ergonomics, 93, 103301. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2020.103301
Panchal, P., Kaltenboeck, A., & Harmer, C. J. (2019). Cognitive emotional processing across mood disorders. CNS Spectrums, 24(1), 54–63. https://doi.org/10.1017/S109285291800130X
Patel, K. V., Williams, M. N., Adams, J. M., & Pinter, A. T. (2023). It’s just that sudden feeling of being transported: Music as a digital possession after a romantic relationship ends. iConference 2023 Proceedings.
Pehrs, C., Deserno, L., Bakels, J.-H., Schlochtermeier, L. H., Kappelhoff, H., Jacobs, A. M., Fritz, T. H., Koelsch, S., & Kuchinke, L. (2014). How music alters a kiss: Superior temporal gyrus controls fusiform–amygdalar effective connectivity. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(11), 1770–1778. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst169
Phan, K. L., Wager, T., Taylor, S. F., & Liberzon, I. (2002). Functional Neuroanatomy of Emotion: A Meta-Analysis of Emotion Activation Studies in PET and fMRI. NeuroImage, 16(2), 331–348. https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2002.1087
Posner, J., Russell, J. A., Gerber, A., Gorman, D., Colibazzi, T., Yu, S., Wang, Z., Kangarlu, A., Zhu, H., & Peterson, B. S. (2009). The neurophysiological bases of emotion: An fMRI study of the affective circumplex using emotion-denoting words. Human Brain Mapping, 30(3), 883–895. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20553
Preston, S. D., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Grabowski, T. J., Stansfield, R. B., Mehta, S., & Damasio, A. R. (2007). The neural substrates of cognitive empathy. Social Neuroscience, 2(3–4), 254–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470910701376902
Rasch, B., & Born, J. (2013). About Sleep’s Role in Memory. Physiological Reviews, 93(2), 681–766. https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.00032.2012
Richardson, M. P., Strange, B. A., & Dolan, R. J. (2004). Encoding of emotional memories depends on amygdala and hippocampus and their interactions. Nature Neuroscience, 7(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1190
Schindler, S., Wegrzyn, M., Steppacher, I., & Kissler, J. (2015). Perceived Communicative Context and Emotional Content Amplify Visual Word Processing in the Fusiform Gyrus. Journal of Neuroscience, 35(15), 6010–6019. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3346-14.2015
Scully, I. D., Napper, L. E., & Hupbach, A. (2017). Does reactivation trigger episodic memory change? A meta-analysis. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 142, 99–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2016.12.012
Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Aharon-Peretz, J., & Perry, D. (2009). Two systems for empathy: A double dissociation between emotional and cognitive empathy in inferior frontal gyrus versus ventromedial prefrontal lesions. Brain, 132(3), 617–627. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awn279
Squire, L. R., Genzel, L., Wixted, J. T., & Morris, R. G. (2015). Memory Consolidation. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology, 7(8), a021766. https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a021766
St. Jacques, P. L., Olm, C., & Schacter, D. L. (2013). Neural mechanisms of reactivation-induced updating that enhance and distort memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(49), 19671–19678. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319630110
Staresina, B. P., Alink, A., Kriegeskorte, N., & Henson, R. N. (2013). Awake reactivation predicts memory in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(52), 21159–21164. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1311989110
Steinbeis, N., & Koelsch, S. (2011). Affective Priming Effects of Musical Sounds on the Processing of Word Meaning. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(3), 604–621. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2009.21383
Tabei, K. (2015). Inferior Frontal Gyrus Activation Underlies the Perception of Emotions, While Precuneus Activation Underlies the Feeling of Emotions during Music Listening. Behavioural Neurology, 2015, e529043. https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/529043
Tan, S.-L., Spackman, M. P., & Bezdek, M. A. (2007). Viewers’ Interpretations of Film Characters’ Emotions: Effects of Presenting Film Music Before or After a Character is Shown. Music Perception, 25(2), 135–152. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2007.25.2.135
Tay, K. R. (2018). Episodic Memory Reconsolidation and Strengthening [Doctor of Philosophy]. University of Birmingham.
Tay, R. Y. L., & Ng, B. C. (2019). Effects of affective priming through music on the use of emotion words. PLoS ONE, 14(4), e0214482. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214482
Thompson, W. F., Geeves, A. M., & Olsen, K. N. (2019). Who enjoys listening to violent music and why? Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 218–232. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000184
Toiviainen, P., Alluri, V., Brattico, E., Wallentin, M., & Vuust, P. (2014). Capturing the musical brain with Lasso: Dynamic decoding of musical features from fMRI data. NeuroImage, 88, 170–180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.11.017
Trost, W., Ethofer, T., Zentner, M., & Vuilleumier, P. (2012). Mapping Aesthetic Musical Emotions in the Brain. Cerebral Cortex, 22(12), 2769–2783. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhr353
Watanabe, T., Yagishita, S., & Kikyo, H. (2008). Memory of music: Roles of right hippocampus and left inferior frontal gyrus. NeuroImage, 39(1), 483–491.
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063
Wichert, S., Wolf, O. T., & Schwabe, L. (2013). Updating of episodic memories depends on the strength of new learning after memory reactivation. Behavioral Neuroscience, 127(3), 331–338. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032028
Williams, J. M. G., Watts, F. N., MacLeod, C., & Mathews, A. (1997). Cognitive Psychology and Emotional Disorders (2nd ed.). Wiley.
Zeidman, P., & Maguire, E. A. (2016). Anterior hippocampus: The anatomy of perception, imagination and episodic memory. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 17(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2015.24
Funding
We received the Georgia State University/Georgia Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Brain Imaging Seed Grant which supported the MRI scans of this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Y. Ren and S. Mehdizadeh conceptualized and designed the study under the guidance of G. Leslie and T. Brown. Y. Ren and S. Mehdizadeh conducted the study and collected the data. Y. Ren and S. Mehdizadeh conducted the data analysis and interpretation. Y. Ren and S. Mehdizadeh contributed to the literature review and manuscript preparation. T. Brown and G. Leslie provided critical revisions and intellectual input. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript. Y. Ren and S. Mehdizadeh contributed equally to the study.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of interest
We declared no conflicts of interest.
Ethics approval
The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Georgia Institute of Technology (Protocol No.H17456). All participants provided written informed consent before participating in the study.
Consent to participate
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Consent for publication
Consent for publication was obtained from all participants in this study. Participants were informed that their data would be used for publication purposes and agreed to the publication of their anonymized data. No identifiable personal information will be disclosed in the publication.
Open practices statement
The data and materials for the experiment here are available at: https://osf.io/yr5em. The experiment was not preregistered.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Ren, Y., Mehdizadeh, S.K., Leslie, G. et al. Affective music during episodic memory recollection modulates subsequent false emotional memory traces: an fMRI study. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 24, 912–930 (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-024-01200-0
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-024-01200-0