Study: Music Can Change How You Remember Events

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Colorado Boulder found that listening to music can change how you feel about your memories. This could potentially help those with difficult or traumatic memories. The three-day experiment asked participants to memorize emotionally neutral stories, and then recalled the stories while listening to positive music, negative music, or silence. When participants listened to the emotionally-charged music, they incorporated more emotional elements into the stories. Positive music was associated with more positive elements, and vice versa. “For people dealing with conditions such as depression or PTSD…carefully chosen music might help reframe those memories in a more positive light,” psychology researcher Yiren Ren wrote. (Study Finds)