[HN Gopher] Memory for music doesn't diminish with age
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Memory for music doesn't diminish with age
Author : gnabgib
Score : 40 points
Date : 2024-07-24 23:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| solardev wrote:
| Side question: I'm curious, what is a "feminist music scientist"
| exactly? How does her research differ from other music
| scientists'?
|
| Edit: It's actually a whole lab at her university, it seems.
| Their publications:
| https://sarahasauve.wixsite.com/femslab/publications
| coldtea wrote:
| > _How does her research differ from other music scientists '?_
|
| It gets grants more easily and looks good to the kind of people
| that matter when featured on university PR releases.
| k310 wrote:
| Apparently, it's a methodology. While I'm not delving into
| that, I notice that only one paper addresses feminism, and the
| others all look gender-neutral on the surface, and appear to be
| strongly focused on aging.
|
| My own experience is that music recognition increases with (my)
| age, and I've come close to perfect pitch, contrary to some
| studies I recall (not as well as the music). With the exception
| of some wildly overplayed pieces (IMO!!) which seem immensely
| popular, I can hear others over and over. I suspect it's either
| the depth, lyricism, vivid emotion, internal complexity, or
| stunning perfection in simplicity (a la Mozart)
|
| Someone posted a Ukranian hymn, which I recognized as a
| movement from a Brahms symphony.
|
| My observations only. YMMV. Music keeps me feeling young.
| saulpw wrote:
| Thematically related is the music of The Caretaker. It's haunting
| and beautiful and quite memorable. Check out An Empty Bliss
| Beyond This World[0], which is kind of a nice album for some
| melancholy reflection on age and the experience of dementia. His
| final 6-album sequence, Everywhere At The End Of Time[1], is less
| accessible, particularly the final 3 albums which are mostly
| noise (the whole 6-hour work was a terrifying listening challenge
| on TikTok a few years ago).
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL998ajnjN4
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Empty_Bliss_Beyond_This_Wor...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJWksPWDKOc
| bilegeek wrote:
| And if you're looking for more like it, IMO the best derivative
| album would be "All The Grand Memories Of All The Lovely
| Years"[0] at over 11 hours long. I haven't listened to it all,
| but some sections do some interesting things ([1] as an example
| of a newly-formed memory in late-stage disease).
|
| [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tP43Q_VWyM
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tP43Q_VWyM&t=30573s
| 1024core wrote:
| It's well known fact among those who have anything to do with
| retirement homes: really old people with severe dementia and
| other such ailments have no problem recalling music, their
| favorite songs, etc.
| amelius wrote:
| Isn't the problem that older people lose their short-term
| memory rather than their long-term memory?
| TylerE wrote:
| Once it gets bad, it's everything. I've got about a 1/4
| chance of my grandmother calling me the correct name at this
| point. She knows I'm one of her grandkids, but isn't really
| sure which is which.
| devonsolomon wrote:
| An ex girlfriend's grandfather had Lewis body dementia and was
| constantly telling her that he could hear perfectly and entirely
| songs from his childhood, songs he hadn't heard in decades.
|
| Amazing that they're still in there somewhere.
| handedness wrote:
| Clive Wearing comes to mind. He has a ~7-30s memory, but can
| perform and conduct complex pieces lasting minutes without
| interruption.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Wearing
| ambicapter wrote:
| Should we memorize everything in song form?
| khazhoux wrote:
| Unclear. I have not-great memory, but I can hear music in my
| head very precisely even after decades. Like, the other day I
| anticipated the exact moment of a guitar stab and when the
| singer was about to crank it up a notch, in a random song I
| don't remember hearing since the 80s. But what I'm recalling is
| the _audio_ , the specific waveform representation. I struggle
| to remember and recite lyrics, even to my favorite songs, and
| I'm very slow to memorize new pieces on piano [ _]
|
| So there's some specific memory pathway for audio. Unclear if
| that would trigger by just, e.g., reading a passage in melody
| form. Would the audio imprint?
|
| [_] Experiment: how fast could I learn a piano piece by first
| listening to _one_ specific recording several times, to let the
| audio imprint in my memory?
| nutshell89 wrote:
| I think it's less about memorizing lyrics, tunes, etc and more
| about associating certain musical pieces with specific
| memories, feelings, and life events (like a grandmother baking
| pies in November while she whistles The Beatles, remembering
| navigating the pain of a breakup through Taylor Swift, or
| churning through homework with the soundtrack of Daft Punk)
| louthy wrote:
| Certain memorisation techniques leverage innate human abilities.
| For example, if you want to memorise a shopping list, mentally
| picture the items as waypoints on a route you know well, then
| when you want to recall the list, mentally walk the route in your
| head, visualising the items. Our ability to recall routes taken
| is probably as good as our music recollection. If I said to you
| to mentally walk the route from the front door of your childhood
| house to the nearest shop (or significant location) then you
| could do it easily.
|
| This clearly taps into our ability to find our way back to the
| cave after going out hunting for food. Our ability to memorise
| the route home was necessary to survive.
|
| I read somewhere that early language was more tonal. Closer to
| singing than the defined words we use now. So, perhaps our
| ability to memorise music was actually an innate ability to
| remember early stories or facts shared with the group? Again,
| leading to increased survival chances.
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