CAN MUSIC BRING BACK MEMORIES?

 

Some people say that Music brings back Memories but others say it is a myth. So from this, a question arises. Can Music really bring back Memories? Well, the answer is a yes. To understand how it works, we will have to understand how the memories are stored in our brain. By the research of the Neuroscientists, it was found that the memories are found in pieces rather than whole. It was also found that the memories are made in one part of the brain while they are stored different sites of the brain. So, whenever you recall a memory, you are actually bouncing nerve signals between all these pieces to recreate the whole. So it is a bit like jig-saw puzzle which reveals the entire picture when complete. Now, you would probably wonder. Why would Brain break the memories down into pieces? Well, breaking down the memories would increase the storage space available to your brain, by reusing the similar bits of old memories, instead of create a new one from the scratch. The memory of what an apple is, for example, could be split and linked to others, such as those of fire engines, tennis ball and banana. So when you think of an apple, you create an idea of it by comparing it to other ‘red things’, ‘sphere-shaped’ and ‘fruit’. That way, you don’t have to store every new thing you encounter in your daily life. Ok, so let’s get back to the topic. So, how does music bring back old memories? So basically, the Neuroscientists think that to bring by old memories, all you have to trigger one part of a memory- say, by hearing a piece of music, and the signal will flow through the rest of the circuit almost automatically, bringing back the other details of that music and what you associate with it. That is one idea of how it might work.

 

 

 

N B Ritesh Varshan