You Can Forget Everything…
But you can’t forget the music
Playing an instrument requires a special kind of memory-building to remember all those little notes and sharps and flats. But as memory deteriorates, how much music can musicians truly remember?
Clive Wearing is an accomplished pianist. He is an expert in early music and founded the Europa Singers of London, a choir specializing in the music of the 17th, 18th, and 20th centuries. He built a successful career in partnership with the BBC. However, on March 27, 1985, Wearing contracted a herpes simplex virus that attacked his central nervous system and effectively destroyed his hippocampus. The hippocampus is a section of the brain that closely regulates memory, leaving Wearing unable to store new memories and barely able to recall old ones. As a result, every 7 to 30 seconds, Wearing’s memory resets, and he feels like he is waking up for the very first time.
What does this mean? Several times a minute, Wearing believes that he has just awoken from a comatose state. In a diary he keeps, his entries look like this:
They are similar to :
8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.
9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.
9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.
Happily, Wearing is able to recognize his wife Deborah, although it seems to him that every time she walks into a room, it is the first time he has ever seen her. His memory works in an interesting way. If you give him a cup of coffee, he will tell you he does not know what it is. If he drinks it, he can tell you it is coffee. Once he puts it down, he has already forgotten what the liquid is.
This kind of severe anterograde and retrograde amnesia is extremely difficult to live with. Wearing doesn’t remember anyone else from his family. He does not know where he is from, or what he has been doing for most of his life. But the most amazing part of Wearing’s journey is his continued ability to play music.
If Wearing sits down in front of a piano, he cannot tell you what the instrument is called or how it works. But once he puts his fingers on the keys, he can still play it amazingly well. Click here for a video.
What allows Wearing to do this? Is the way music is stored in the brain different than other memories?
There are several possible answers. First, the hippocampus, which is severely damaged in many memory disorders, including Alzheimer’s, works closely with the amygdala. The amygdala is an almond-shaped section of the brain that primarily deals with the regulation of emotions.
Although memory disorders like Alzheimer’s damage the hippocampus, they generally leave the amygdala intact. Memories involving music tend to be closely linked to our emotions. As a result, playing music can trigger the amygdala, which in turn may “cross-talk” with the hippocampus to bring back memories. A 2012 study saw that people told to recount their memories in the presence of music were able to bring back more specific memories than those told to recount their memories in silence. The people accompanied by music also recounted memories with more emotional significance, and they were able to remember them faster than those without music. This points to a connection between music, the amygdala, and memory recall.
However, there is also a less emotional side to this. As musicians learn to play music, they memorize it. This systematic memorization or “muscle memory” falls into the category of procedural memory. This is a kind of long-term memory that focuses on motor skills. For example, you don’t have to think about how to walk once you learn to. Learning music is similar to this. The interesting part is that procedural memory is stored in the cerebellum, an area at the back of the brain that deals with motor skills and coordination. As a result, although the hippocampus may be destroyed, the cerebellum still holds the “learned” music.
Lastly, a study that scanned the brains of musicians and non-musicians found that musicians have more grey matter in their hippocampus. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that grey matter is clusters of neurons, or brain cells. This means that musicians simply have more brain matter in the hippocampus. It is possible, then, that a memory disorder may affect their hippocampus less.
In any case, the connection between music and memory remains fascinating. There is no known center for music in the brain, but even so, it is obvious that it plays a significant role in our brain functions. Wearing’s story and his amazing ability show us that ultimately, even when there is little left, music always remains with us.
Citations:
DiFazio, Kevin “Forget-Me-Notes.” Lexia Volume 1.
Groussard, Mathilde et al. “When Music and Long-Term Memory Interact: Effects of Musical Expertise on Functional and Structural Plasticity in the Hippocampus.” PLoS One (2010): 1–8.
Haj, Mohammed El, Luciano Fasotti, and Phillipe Allain. “The Involuntary Nature of Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories in Alzheimer’s Disease.” Consciousness and Cognition (2012): 238–246.
Richter-Levin G., Akirav I. “Amygdala-hippocampus dynamic interaction in relation to memory.” PubMed (2000).
Picture credits:
https://alchetron.com/Clive-Wearing
