“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” –Plato
Most seniors, regardless of their background, enjoy listening to some type of music: rock, classical, jazz, country, or folk. Music has a direct connection to our moods; it can make us happy or sad, energized or soothed. Listening to the type of music that we like can be positively reinforcing, otherwise we would not listen to it. Strangely, very little research has been done on music’s effects on brain function in seniors until recently. A study has come out focusing on two types or memory: episodic and semantic. The subjects of this study were not musicians and the average age was 69.
The test conditions were: 1) no music control, 2) white noise control, 3) a Mozart recording, and 4) a Mahler recording. All subjects were tested and counter balanced in order over all four categories. The music was played as background at a modest volume during the completion of three tasks: a mental processing speed task and two memory tasks. The episodic memory task involved trying to recall a list of 15 words immediately after a two-minute study period. The semantic memory task involved word recall where subjects were wrote as many words they could think of starting with the same three letters.
The discoveries were these:
1) Processing speeds were faster listening to Mozart that with Mahler or white noise. No improvement was seen with Mahler over white noise or no music.
2) Episodic memory was better with Mozart or Mahler than with white noise or no music. No differences were noted between the two music types.
3) Semantic music was better with Mozart or Mahler than with white noise and better with Mozart than no music.
Noting that emotional response could be a factor in these tasks the experimenters presented a questionnaire to the subjects comparing the two music types with the white noise. They found that Mozart generated higher happiness indicators than did Mahler or white noise and Mahler was rated sadder than Mozart and was comparable to white noise. Thus happy, but not sad, music was correlated with processing speed (and happy subjects were more alert). Both happy and sad music enhanced both types of memory over white noise or silence, but it is not clear if this observation of generally applicable.