Cognitive and emotional benefits

The question

Given music's powerful effect on emotion and on the cognitive system, it is natural to ask whether the memory-boosting effect of emotional music can be harnessed to improve cognitive performance more generally, and particularly in clinical contexts.

What the research found

Särkämö and colleagues investigated whether regular exposure to music in daily life could aid the recovery of cognitive abilities and mood after a stroke. Patients who listened to their favourite music every day showed significant improvements in verbal memory and sustained attention compared with those who listened to audiobooks or received no auditory stimulation. They also reported clear improvements in mood: they were less depressed and less confused than the control group.

These findings underline how deeply music reaches into emotional and cognitive function. Music naturally stimulates, energises and evokes specific emotional responses, and those responses in turn influence and regulate a range of cognitive processes.

What a singer can take from it

The music that helped most was music the patients loved. For a singer that suggests the pieces that move you are not only more pleasant to practise; they may be the ones your memory holds best. The journal entries on Le Colibri and O del mio dolce ardor are, in part, a test of that.