The positive effect of music on source memory

Abstract

Several studies have investigated how to improve episodic memory performance by manipulating the factors that are crucial for successful encoding. There is an ongoing debate about whether a complex stimulus such as music can improve memory, and in particular memory for words, rather than interfere with correct encoding of information. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate whether verbal episodic memory can be improved by background context of instrumental music. Twenty young adults were asked to memorize different lists of words presented against a background of music, environmental sounds or silence. Their episodic memory performance was then tested in terms of item and source memory scores. Results revealed better memory performance under the music condition than with environmental sounds or silence in the retrieval of the context (i.e. source) of the encoded material. These findings, contrasting with studies showing an interfering effect of music, are discussed in terms of both methodological and theoretical perspectives with the aim of furthering the debate about music and memory. In sum, our results indicate that music can specifically act as a facilitating encoding context for verbal episodic memory, opening important perspectives for music as a rehabilitation tool for episodic memory deficits.

Full text

Musicae Scientiae
1 –10
© The Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1029864915604684
msx.sagepub.com
The positive effect of music on
source memory
Laura Ferreri
University of Burgundy, France
Emmanuel Bigand
University of Burgundy, France
Aurélia Bugaiska
University of Burgundy, France
Abstract
Several studies have investigated how to improve episodic memory performance by manipulating the
factors that are crucial for successful encoding. There is an ongoing debate about whether a complex
stimulus such as music can improve memory, and in particular memory for words, rather than interfere
with correct encoding of information. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate whether verbal
episodic memory can be improved by background context of instrumental music. Twenty young adults
were asked to memorize different lists of words presented against a background of music, environmental
sounds or silence. Their episodic memory performance was then tested in terms of item and source
memory scores. Results revealed better memory performance under the music condition than with
environmental sounds or silence in the retrieval of the context (i.e. source) of the encoded material.
These findings, contrasting with studies showing an interfering effect of music, are discussed in terms of
both methodological and theoretical perspectives with the aim of furthering the debate about music and
memory. In sum, our results indicate that music can specifically act as a facilitating encoding context for
verbal episodic memory, opening important perspectives for music as a rehabilitation tool for episodic
memory deficits.
Keywords
encoding, episodic memory, item-source memory, memory improvement, background music
Introduction
Music has a strong and influential presence throughout life. Thus, like Proust’s madeleine, lis-
tening to a particular song or melody can evoke specific moments of life, such as childhood, a
Corresponding author:
Laura Ferreri, Laboratoire d’Etude de l’Apprentissage et du Développement (LEAD), Department of Psychology, CNRS
UMR 5022, Université de Bourgogne, Pole AAFE-Esplanade Erasme, 21000 Dijon, France.
Email: lf.ferreri@gmail.com
604684MSX0010.1177/1029864915604684Musicae ScientiaeFerreri et al.
research-article2015
Article
by guest on September 30, 2015msx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

2 Musicae Scientiae
special person, or a particularly enjoyable party. Regarding long-term memory, Tulving (1972)
defined the memory for events occurring at a particular time and place as episodic memory. This
concept was presented as a heuristic distinction between memory for general facts (i.e. seman-
tic) and memory for personally experienced events (i.e. episodic), namely the kind of source of
to-be-remembered information (Tulving, 1972, 2002). While semantic memory is a form of
declarative memory that allows people to retrieve information about general facts, episodic
memory concerns the recall of subjective previous experiences that happened at particular
times or places. Episodic memory is thus strictly related to the content as well as the context in
which an experience happened and it is essential for the performance of numerous tasks, such
as recalling the name of someone previously met, remembering the current date or an appoint-
ment in the near future (see e.g. Ranganath, Flegal, & Kelly, 2011). Thus, episodic memory is a
long-term memory system which allows humans to violate the law of the irreversibility of time
by making possible “mental time travel through subjective time, from the present to past, thus
allowing one to re-experience, through autonoetic awareness, one’s own previous experiences”
(Tulving, 2002, p. 5). Episodic memory therefore contains information about both the content
of an experience and the context in which that experience was encoded. Several studies have
shown that memory for content (item memory) and memory for context (source memory) can be
dissociated (Glisky, Polster, & Routhieaux, 1995). For example, we can recognize a person (the
content) without being able to retrieve the context, in other words, where and when we met
them. This has led several authors to investigate what can improve episodic memory and the
processes that are involved. It is well known that the instructions given to subjects at encoding
play a crucial role in memory performance. For example, the manipulation of deeper levels of
processing (e.g. semantic processing, Craik & Lockart, 1972) can improve the retrieval of previ-
ously encoded items. It has also been shown that enacted encoding (i.e. using external objects
to represent the encoded nouns, Lövdén, Rönnlund, & Nilsson, 2002) can improve memory
performance. Furthermore, the type of material used can considerably modulate episodic
encoding. For example, several studies have shown how emotional stimuli such as pictures,
words, sentences and narrated slide shows can enhance subsequent item and source memory
performance (Davidson, McFarland, & Glisky, 2006; Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001; Kensinger
& Corkin, 2003; see also Hamann, 2001 for a review). The encoding context also plays a cru-
cial role, and it has been shown that the richness of contextual details during the encoding of
an event can strongly influence subsequent retrieval (see e.g. Eich, 1985; Hamann, 2001). Eich
(1985) highlighted the importance of the physical context (e.g. natural environment or exam
room) in remembering what has been learned. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the
enriched context of a fictional survival scenario (Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008; Nairne,
Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007) can improve memory encoding and subsequent retrieval
(Kroneisen & Erdfelder, 2011). Music, with its rich structure (e.g. melodies, chords, themes,
riffs, rhythms and tempos), has also been identified in the literature as a captivating stimulus
(see Zatorre, 2005 for a review) and has been shown to stimulate the whole brain through a
diverse set of perceptive and cognitive operations from auditory mechanisms and motor pro-
gramming to higher cognitive functions such as attention and memory storage and retrieval
(Altenmüller, 2001; Zatorre, 2005). Music also exerts a strong emotional power by evoking
emotions and influencing moods (Koelsch, 2014; Zatorre & Salimpoor, 2013).
There is ongoing debate about the effect that music exerts on memory. While a large number
of studies have shown that music can positively influence memory performance (e.g. Balch,
Bowman, & Mohler, 1992; Balch & Lewis, 1996; Kang & Williamson, 2014; Ludke, Ferreira, &
Overy, 2014; Simmons-Stern, Budson, & Ally, 2010; Wallace, 1994), several studies have sug-
gested that it can draw participants’ attention away from relevant information, hindering rather
by guest on September 30, 2015msx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Ferreri et al. 3
than assisting encoding (El Haj, Omigie, & Clément, 2014; Jäncke, Brügger, Brummer, Scherrer,
& Alahmadi 2014; Jäncke & Sandmann, 2010). Furthermore, several mechanisms have been
hypothesized to be related to such different outcomes; for example, the modulation of emotions
and arousal, as proposed by the arousal and mood hypothesis (Thompson, Schellenberg, &
Husain, 2001), or modulation of attentional levels (i.e. music distracts attention from a specific
task thus impairing performance; see Kämpfe, Sedlmeier, & Renkewitz, 2010 for a review of the
effects of background music on performance in a variety of tasks). This heterogeneity may be
due, at least in part, to the great variety of paradigms (e.g. background music, sung versus spo-
ken, long-term music exposure), the memory task (e.g. free recall, recognition, episodic vs work-
ing memory tasks, etc.) and stimuli (e.g. vocal, instrumental) employed, which could affect
different memory processes. It is therefore crucial to understand which memory systems are
involved and how. Although many studies have investigated the relationship between music and
memory, little is known about how music specifically acts on the episodic system.
One interesting hypothesis is that music, when used as an encoding context, can facilitate
the episodic encoding of an event. Smith (1985) demonstrated that background music during
word encoding induces context-dependent memory during retrieval, improving recall of the
previously encoded words. This supports the view of the existence of a music-dependent mem-
ory (Balch etal., 1992; Balch & Lewis, 1996), suggesting that a musical context can positively
influence the encoding of an event. Following this line, a number of studies have investigated
the enhancing effect of music, using musical stimuli such as sung text or background music to
improve verbal memory and learning performance in both healthy (Kang & Williamson, 2014;
Ludke etal., 2014; Wallace, 1994) and clinical populations (Moussard, Bigand, Belleville, &
Peretz, 2012; Racette & Peretz, 2007; Simmons-Stern etal., 2010). Overall, these studies sup-
port the idea that a musical source can improve recall of previously encoded items. However,
none of them specifically investigated the role played by a musical context during retrieval of
the source itself, and the few studies that have focused on this question found contrasting
results (El Haj etal., 2014; Ferreri, Aucouturier, Muthalib, Bigand, & Bugaiska, 2013; Ferreri,
Bigand, et al., 2014). A series of fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy) studies on
young and older adults showed that a musical background during the encoding of verbal mate-
rial can improve both item and source memory performance by modulating prefrontal cortex
activity (Ferreri, Aucouturier, etal., 2013; Ferreri, Bigand, etal., 2014). One of the main limi-
tations of these studies is that the musical context was compared with a silent encoding condi-
tion. Therefore, it was not possible to know whether a simple non-musical auditory stimulation
is enough to improve memory performance. Furthermore, using images of objects, El Haj etal.
(2014) recently showed that a musical background is likely to impair source memory perfor-
mance in young and older adults, adding new evidence to the controversy about the positive
effects of music.
To examine these issues further, our aim was to investigate: 1) whether verbal memory can
be improved by music in terms of both item and source memory, and 2) whether the facilitation
provided by an auditory context is music-specific or could be due to auditory stimulation in
general. We therefore asked young adults to encode lists of words presented with different audi-
tory backgrounds, and we then tested both their item and source memory performance. To
ascertain whether the positive effects on memory rely on the intrinsic features of music (i.e.
rhythm, melody, emotional valence, etc.) rather than on general sounds, stimuli were presented
under three auditory contextual conditions: music, silence and environmental sounds.
Considering music to be a rich and facilitatory encoding context, we expected to find greater
improvements in episodic memory performance under the music condition than under either
the environmental sounds or silence conditions.
by guest on September 30, 2015msx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

4 Musicae Scientiae
Method
Participants
Twenty undergraduates (13 women, mean age 23.3 ± 2.9 years) at the University of Burgundy
took part in the experiment in exchange for course credits. All participants were volunteers and
reported themselves to be free from medication known to affect the central nervous system.
They were non-musicians, native French speakers, and reported having normal or corrected-
to-normal vision and hearing. The study was anonymous and complied fully with the Helsinki
Declaration and the Convention of the Council of Europe on Human Rights and Biomedicine.
Stimuli and apparatus
The experiment had a single-factor (encoding context: silence, environmental sounds and
music) within-subjects design. Verbal stimuli consisted of 90 taxonomically unrelated concrete
nouns selected from the French “Lexique” database (New, Pallier, Brysbaert, & Ferrand, 2004).
They were divided randomly into two sets of 45 words, matched for frequency and length. One
set was presented at encoding and these words were used as target items in the succeeding rec-
ognition test, while the other set provided the lures. Half of the participants were presented
with one list, half with the other. Moreover, the two word lists were randomly divided into three
lists of 15 words presented with three different auditory contexts and equated for word length
and frequency of occurrence. Auditory stimuli were chosen after a pre-test in which partici-
pants were asked to rate the pleasantness, the emotional intensity and the arousal quality of
the words using a 10-point scale. The chosen stimuli were rated as enjoyable, with medium
emotional intensity and low arousal quality. The musical background was an excerpt from
“Down, Down, Down” (by Joe Satriani, 1995). Instrumental rather than vocal music was cho-
sen in order to avoid possible interference with the verbal to-be-encoded material. The environ-
mental sounds context consisted of the sound of a waterfall (from Majestic Waterfall CD album,
1998). Presentation of task instructions and stimuli, as well as the recording of behavioral
responses, were controlled by E-Prime software (Psychology Software Tools, Inc.) using a laptop
with a 15” monitor. Verbal stimuli were visually presented in the middle of the screen. Auditory
stimuli were presented using a headset, and the overall loudness of the excerpts was adjusted
subjectively to ensure constant loudness throughout the experiment.
Procedure
Participants were tested individually and were seated at a PC in a quiet room. They were told to
read the words and to remember them for a subsequent test.
The encoding phase consisted of 5 seconds of word encoding, preceded and followed by 20
seconds of context only. The order of music / environmental sounds / silence blocks was coun-
terbalanced, as were the order of word lists and the order of words in the lists. Encoding was
followed by an interference phase lasting about 5 minutes, during which subjects performed
the “X-O” letter-comparison task (Salthouse, Toth, Hancock, & Woodard, 1997) and the “plus-
minus” task (Jersild, 1927; Spector & Biederman, 1976). These tasks were included to avoid
self-repetition. The interference phase here is crucial to test for long-term episodic memory
(rather than working memory) performance. After that, participants were tested for item and
source memory (Glisky etal., 1995). The retrieval phase included the 45 old words and 45 new
words. For each word, subjects had to indicate if they had previously seen the word in the
encoding phase (yes/no button on the keyboard – item memory task). If they answered yes,
by guest on September 30, 2015msx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Ferreri et al. 5
they were asked to indicate the context (music / environmental sounds / silence button on the
keyboard – source memory task).
Data analysis
Each participant’s accuracy (hit) rates (number of yes/no recognition hits for each condition)
and total false alarm rates in the item-memory tasks were calculated. Source-memory was cal-
culated as the result of correct source judgments (number of context recognition hits for each
condition) minus false alarm rates for each of the three experimental conditions. One-sample
t-tests were used to ascertain whether all the scores were significantly above chance level.
Repeated-measures ANOVAs were run on item- and source-memory scores to identify main
effects, and LSD post-hoc t-tests were applied to test for significant differences between condi-
tions. Data were statistically analyzed using SPSS Software 17.0.
Results
One-sample t-tests indicated that item memory scores were greater than the chance level for
music (t(19) = 5.98, p < .001, d = 0.808), environmental sounds (t(19) = 3.31, p = .004,
d = 0.605) and silence conditions (t(19) = 4.40, p < .001, d = 0.710). Furthermore, source
memory scores were greater than the chance level for music (t(19) = 6.38, p < .001, d = 0.809),
environmental sounds (t(19) = 2.98, p = .008, d = 0.564) and silence (t(19) = 2.98, p = .008,
d = 0.454) contexts.
Repeated-measures ANOVA for item memory scores did not show significant main effects
(F(2, 38) = 2.297, SS =16.90, MS = 8.45, p = .114,
η
p
2 = 0.11). However, as shown in Figure 1,
post-hoc LSD pairwise comparisons showed marginal significances suggesting that instrumental
Figure 1. Item memory (a) and Source memory (b) scores (mean percentage of correct answers scores
± SD) for music (black), environmental sounds (grey) and silence (white) conditions. Results from post-
hoc LSD pairwise comparisons revealed that subjects tended to better retrieve words previously encoded
with music (M = 73.33, SD = 17.44) than environmental sounds (M = 66, SD = 21.62) and silence (M =
65.67, SD = 15.93). Subjects significantly better retrieved the musical source (M = 46.68, SD = 15.21) as
compared to the environmental (M = 38.55, SD = 20.38) and silence contexts (M = 34.83, SD = 19.81). *p
< .05, (*).05 < p < .09 resulted from post-hoc LSD comparisons.
by guest on September 30, 2015msx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

6 Musicae Scientiae
background music was of greater benefit than environmental sounds (p = .059) and silence
(p = .083). This tendency became statistically significant in the repeated-measures ANOVA
performed on the source memory scores (F(2,38) = 5.275, SS =54.03, MS =27.02, p = .01,
η
p
2 = 0.22), where post-hoc LSD pairwise comparisons revealed that the music source was
retrieved better than environmental sounds (p = .016) and silence (p = .002).
Discussion
This study was designed to investigate the specific role of music in episodic memory. As pre-
dicted in our working hypothesis, results showed that a context of instrumental music pro-
duced better episodic performance than silence or environmental sounds. In particular, this
positive effect was statistically significant for the context (source) of encoding.
These results are in line with several studies showing that music facilitates verbal memory
performance (e.g. Kang & Williamson, 2014; Ludke etal., 2014; Moussard etal., 2012; Racette
& Peretz, 2007; Simmons-Stern etal., 2010; Wallace, 1994) and further support the hypothe-
sis that music can act as an enriched and facilitatory encoding context for episodic memory
performance.
One of the main findings of our study is that a background of music, and not of other sounds
(i.e. environmental condition), can provide a helpful episodic context during verbal encoding.
This raises the question of which specific features of a musical background can improve memory
performance. Palmer, Jungers, and Jusczyk (2001) suggested that the sources of musical stimulus
variability, such as perceptual features, emotional state or interpretive effects, offer a primary
resource for aiding memory and learning. Further evidence for the crucial role of music-related
emotions comes from a study showing that emotional information modulates musical memory in
a similar way to the influence of emotional states in other domains (Eschrich, Münte, &
Altenmüller, 2008). It is therefore possible that the intrinsic features of music that help create
musical episodic memory (Eschrich etal., 2008; Palmer etal., 2001; Platel, Baron, Desgranges,
Bernard, & Eustache, 2003), namely salient perceptual traits and emotional power, work together
to improve item and source memory performance for verbal memory. Considering music as a rich
and salient context, it is also possible that it can help trigger item-source associations during word
encoding (Ferreri, Aucouturier, et al., 2013; Ferreri, Bigand, etal., 2014), thus allowing deep
encoding processing (Craik & Lockart, 1972) that can improve subsequent retrieval of informa-
tion. Such explanation is supported by studies using free-recall memory tasks. Indeed, greater
word chunking has been shown for items previously encoded with music, thus suggesting that
inter-item and item-source bindings are facilitated by a musical background (Ferreri, Bigand,
Bard, & Bugaiska, 2015; McElhinney & Annet, 1996). Another interesting point of discussion
concerns the role of music-related reward responses in cognitive tasks. Music is one of the most
rewarding stimuli (see e.g. Blood & Zatorre, 2001), and it has recently been suggested that this
could be a significant factor in music-related improved cognitive performance (Adcock, Thangavel,
Whitfield-Gabrieli, Knutson, & Gabrieli, 2006; Mas-Herrero, Marco-Pallares, Lorenzo-Seva,
Zatorre, & Rodriguez-Fornells, 2013). The musical stimulus we used was evaluated as pleasant; it
is therefore possible that this feature led participants to accurately retrieve the contextual details
they liked most. In view of the complexity of a musical background compared to the silence or
environmental sounds conditions, it is possible that many mechanisms (related to both emotions
and deep semantic processing) may act together during music-memory tasks, leading to music-
related improved performance. A caveat concerning the environmental sounds condition should
be considered. The environmental sounds source was chosen with the aim of immersing subjects
in a pleasant and medium arousing context that could help (rather than interfere with) verbal
encoding. However, it is possible that the different levels of complexity of the two auditory
by guest on September 30, 2015msx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Ferreri et al. 7
contexts may have had a different effect on the participant’s encoding state. This issue should be
taken into account in future research, which should compare contexts of equal complexity, such
as more perceptually heterogeneous environmental sounds (e.g. by adding bird-song and the rus-
tling of leaves), or two music conditions (e.g. vocal versus instrumental background music) in
order to identify more precisely which specific features of the musical context drive the positive
effects on source memory.
Nevertheless, in our opinion, the present findings offer an important contribution to the debate
on music-related memory improvements. Although several studies have studied how music can
help memory and learning, especially in the verbal domain, little is known about how to experi-
mentally stimulate episodic, and more specifically, source memory performance through music.
Therefore, although the employed paradigm does not allow testing for specific memory and music-
related mechanisms and further research is needed in this domain on both behavioral and neural
levels, the present work suggests that music-driven cognitive improvement may rely on the fact
that instrumental music acts as a helpful encoding context for creating and storing new episodes
in memory. As outlined in the introduction, episodic memory is a particular memory system that
contains information about both the content of an experience (i.e. the quantity) and the context in
which this experience has been encoded (i.e. the quality). The fact that a musical context leads to
better source memory performance would therefore suggest that, rather than drawing partici-
pants’ attention away from the relevant information to remember (El Haj etal., 2014; Jäncke etal.,
2014; Jäncke & Sandmann, 2010), a background of pleasant, non-familiar, instrumental music
could help create new connections between items and the source itself, namely new episodes that
participants can then retrieve during their subjective mental “time travel” (Tulving, 2002). This
would therefore lead to improvements not only in the quantity (Balch etal., 1992; Balch & Lewis,
1996; Kang & Williamson, 2014; Ludke etal., 2014; Simmons-Stern etal., 2010; Wallace, 1994),
but also in the quality of memory performance (see also Ferreri, Bigand, etal., 2014).
Conflicting findings come from studies reporting no, or a negative, effect of music on mem-
ory (e.g. Jäncke etal., 2014; Jäncke & Sandmann, 2010). In particular, a recent work by El Haj
and colleagues (2014) suggested that music hinders source memory, as young and older adults
had greater difficulty retrieving the location of objects previously seen in a music context than
those seen under silence or noise (traffic sounds) conditions. In our opinion it is important to
discuss these contrasting results, in order to further the debate on music and memory. More
specifically, it is possible that these divergent findings are due to differences in experimental
design. First, El Haj etal. (2014) used familiar music (Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”). Although sev-
eral studies have shown that familiar music leads to better memory performance (e.g. Simmons-
Stern etal., 2010), they typically used a sung versus spoken modality for the presented items
rather than background music. The main studies using background music and reporting posi-
tive results on memory and learning used musical pieces that were unfamiliar to the subjects
(e.g. Balch & Lewis, 1996; Kang & Williamson, 2014; Ferreri, Aucouturier, etal., 2013; Ferreri,
Bigand, etal., 2014). It is not yet clear which types of musical stimulus improve memory per-
formance and which interfere with it, and further research in the music cognition domain is
needed to disentangle this important issue. However, this evidence suggests that a well-known
musical piece may draw participants’ attention away from the encoding task and interfere with
subsequent memory performance. More specifically, in line with our previous observation, it is
possible in this case that the use of familiar music may evoke personal events (Sacks, 2006),
thus hindering the creation of new bindings and hence new episodes for subsequent retrieval
in terms of content and contextual information.
Furthermore, although El Haj etal. (2014) used a musical background, the source-memory
test involved object location and not the musical context. In other words, the music was not the
source accompanying the object encoding, but rather a further stimulus that was considered
by guest on September 30, 2015msx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

8 Musicae Scientiae
irrelevant for retrieval of the target information. This difference in task may also explain the
interfering effect of the musical background. The aim of our study was to create a rich encod-
ing source to help participants encode lists of words. This leads to another important difference,
namely the fact that El Haj etal. (2014) used non-verbal material (images of objects). In line
with previous studies focusing on the relationship between music and verbal memory, our
results suggest that there may be a specific link between music (as opposed to a general auditory
context) and words (see e.g. Tillmann, 2012), which disappears when using non-verbal mate-
rial (see Lockhart, 2000). This may be related to associative bindings created between items
and between the item and the source (Ferreri, Aucouturier, etal., 2013; Ferreri, Bigand, etal.,
2014). In other words, it is possible that the unique link between words and music is responsi-
ble for improved episodic memory performance, and that this link makes it easier to bind item
and source, thereby creating new episodes in memory.
These findings could have important implications in the clinical domain. A number of
authors have already investigated the role of music as a rehabilitation tool for memory deficits.
For example, because of their spared memory for music despite serious general memory deficits,
Alzheimer’s patients have been the focus of several studies on the rehabilitative effects of music
(e.g. Moussard etal., 2012; Simmons-Stern et al., 2010; see also Baird & Samson, 2009 for a
review). Music has also been used to stimulate verbal memory and learning performance in
aphasic patients (Racette, Bard, & Peretz, 2006; Racette & Peretz, 2007), stroke patients
(Sarkamo et al., 2008), and patients with multiple sclerosis (Thaut, Peterson, & McIntosh,
2005). However, none of these studies specifically focused on source memory, which is known to
be impaired not only in frontal lobe lesions such as in Alzheimer’s disease (see e.g. Janowsky,
Shimamura, & Squire, 1989) but also in healthy aging (see e.g. Souchay, Isingrini, & Espagnet,
2000). The fact that music is able to improve source memory thus offers new possibilities for the
use of music as a rehabilitation tool for specific episodic memory deficits.
In conclusion, we have shown that music can improve episodic memory by improving episodic,
and more specifically, source memory performance in young adults. Furthermore, the fact that
another auditory context, such as environmental sounds, does not improve memory performance
suggests that this effect is related to intrinsic features of the musical background rather than to
general auditory stimulation. Differences with other studies showing the interfering effects of a
musical source may be due to differences in the experimental design, particularly the type of music
(familiar vs non-familiar), the task (the type of source tested), and the type of material used (verbal
vs non-verbal). Overall, these results open up important prospects for music as a rehabilitation tool
for source memory deficits, in healthy aging or in Alzheimer’s disease, for example.
Funding
This work was supported by the European Project EBRAMUS (European BRAin and MUSic) ITN – Grant
Agreement Number 218357 and the MAAMI ANR Project, TecSan Program, ANR-12-TECS-0014.
References
Adcock, R. A., Thangavel, A., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., Knutson, B., & Gabrieli, J. D. (2006). Reward-
motivated learning: mesolimbic activation precedes memory formation. Neuron, 50(3), 507–517.
Altenmüller, E. O. (2001). How many music centers are in the brain? Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences, 930(1), 273–280.
Baird, A., & Samson, S. (2009). Memory for music in Alzheimer’s disease: unforgettable? Neuropsychology
Review, 19(1), 85–101.
Balch, W. R., & Lewis, B. S. (1996). Music-dependent memory: The roles of tempo change and mood
mediation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22(6), 1354–1363.
by guest on September 30, 2015msx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Ferreri et al. 9
Balch, W. R., Bowman, K., & Mohler, L. A. (1992). Music-dependent memory in immediate and delayed
word recall. Memory & Cognition, 20(1), 21–28.
Blood, A. J., & Zatorre, R. J. (2001). Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in
brain regions implicated in reward and emotion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
98(20), 11818–11823.
Craik, F. I., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of
Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 671–684.
Davidson, P. S., McFarland, C. P., & Glisky, E. L. (2006). Effects of emotion on item and source memory in
young and older adults. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 6(4), 306–322.
Doerksen, S., & Shimamura, A. P. (2001). Source memory enhancement for emotional words. Emotion,
1(1), 5–11.
Eich, E. (1985). Context, memory, and integrated item/context imagery. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11(4), 764–770.
El Haj, M., Omigie, D., & Clément, S. (2014). Music deteriorates source memory: Evidence from normal
aging. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(12), 2381–2391.
Eschrich, S., Münte, T. F., & Altenmüller, E. O. (2008). Unforgettable film music: The role of emotion
in episodic long-term memory for music. BMC Neuroscience, 9(1), 48. Retrieved from http://www.
biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/9/48
Ferreri, L., Aucouturier, J. J., Muthalib, M., Bigand, E., & Bugaiska, A. (2013). Music improves verbal
memory encoding while decreasing prefrontal cortex activity: An fNIRS study. Frontiers in Human
Neuroscience, 7, article 779.
Ferreri, L., Bigand, E., Bard, P., & Bugaiska, A. (2015). The influence of music on prefrontal cortex dur-
ing episodic encoding and retrieval of verbal information: A multichannel fNIRS study. Behavioural
Neurology, 501, article 707625.
Ferreri, L., Bigand, E., Perrey, S., Muthalib, M., Bard, P., & Bugaiska, A. (2014). Less effort, better results:
How does music act on prefrontal cortex in older adults during verbal encoding? An fNIRS study.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, article 301.
Glisky, E. L., Polster, M. R., & Routhieaux, B. C. (1995). Double dissociation between item and source
memory. Neuropsychology, 9(2), 229–235.
Hamann, S. (2001). Cognitive and neural mechanisms of emotional memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
5(9), 394–400.
Jäncke, L., Brügger, E., Brummer, M., Scherrer, S., & Alahmadi, N. (2014). Verbal learning in the context
of background music: No influence of vocals and instrumentals on verbal learning. Behavioral Brain
Functioning, 10, article 10.
Jäncke, L., & Sandmann, P. (2010). Music listening while you learn: No influence of background music on
verbal learning. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 6(1). doi:10.1186/1744-9081-6-3
Janowsky, J. S., Shimamura, A. P., & Squire, L. R. (1989). Source memory impairment in patients with
frontal lobe lesions. Neuropsychologia, 27(8), 1043–1056.
Jersild, A. T. (1927). Mental set and shift. Archives of Psychology, 89.
Kämpfe, J., Sedlmeier, P., & Renkewitz, F. (2010). The impact of background music on adult listeners: A
meta-analysis. Psychology of Music, 39(4), 424–448.
Kang, H. J., & Williamson, V. J. (2014). Background music can aid second language learning. Psychology
of Music, 42(5), 728–747.
Kensinger, E. A., & Corkin, S. (2003). Memory enhancement for emotional words: Are emotional words
more vividly remembered than neutral words? Memory & Cognition, 31(8), 1169–1180.
Koelsch, S. (2014). Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(3),
170–180.
Kroneisen, M., & Erdfelder, E. (2011). On the plasticity of the survival processing effect. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(6), 1553–1562.
Lockhart, R. S. (2000). Methods of memory research. The Oxford handbook of memory (pp. 45–57).
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Lövdén, M., Rönnlund, M., & Nilsson, L. G. (2002). Remembering and knowing in adulthood: Effects of enacted
encoding and relations to processing speed. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 9(3), 184–200.
by guest on September 30, 2015msx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

10 Musicae Scientiae
Ludke, K. M., Ferreira, F., & Overy, K. (2014). Singing can facilitate foreign language learning. Memory
& Cognition, 42(1), 41–52.
Mas-Herrero, E., Marco-Pallares, J., Lorenzo-Seva, U., Zatorre, R. J., & Rodriguez-Fornells, A. (2013).
Individual differences in music reward experiences. Music Perception, 31(2), 118–138.
McElhinney, M., & Annett, J. M. (1996). Pattern of efficacy of a musical mnemonic on 27 recall of familiar
words over several presentations. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 82(2), 395–400.
Moussard, A., Bigand, E., Belleville, S., & Peretz, I. (2012). Music as an aid to learn new verbal information
in Alzheimer’s disease. Music Perceptionl, 29(5), 521–531.
Nairne, J. S., & Pandeirada, J. N. (2008). Adaptive memory: Is survival processing special? Journal of
Memory and Language, 59(3), 377–385.
Nairne, J. S., Thompson, S. R., & Pandeirada, J. N. (2007). Adaptive memory: Survival processing enhances
retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33(2), 263–273.
New, B., Pallier, C., Brysbaert, M., & Ferrand, L. (2004). Lexique 2: A new French lexical database.
Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36(3), 516–524.
Palmer, C., Jungers, M. K., & Jusczyk, P. W. (2001). Episodic memory for musical prosody. Journal of
Memory and Language, 45(4), 526–545.
Platel, H., Baron, J. C., Desgranges, B., Bernard, F., & Eustache, F. (2003). Semantic and episodic memory
of music are subserved by distinct neural networks. Neuroimage, 20(1), 244–256.
Racette, A., Bard, C., & Peretz, I. (2006). Making non-fluent aphasics speak: Sing along! Brain, 129(10),
2571–2584.
Racette, A., & Peretz, I. (2007). Learning lyrics: To sing or not to sing? Memory & Cognition, 35(2),
242–253.
Ranganath, C., Flegal, K. E., & Kelly, L. L. (2011). Can cognitive training improve episodic memory?
Neuron, 72(5), 688–691.
Sacks, O. (2006). The power of music. Brain, 129(10), 2528–2532.
Salthouse, T. A., Toth, J. P., Hancock, H. E., & Woodard, J. L. (1997). Controlled and automatic forms of
memory and attention: Process purity and the uniqueness of age-related influences. The Journals of
Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 52(5), P216–P228.
Särkämö, T., Tervaniemi, M., Laitinen, S., Forsblom, A., Soinila, S., Mikkonen, M., & Hietanen, M. (2008).
Music listening enhances cognitive recovery and mood after middle cerebral artery stroke. Brain,
131(3), 866–876.
Simmons-Stern, N. R., Budson, A. E., & Ally, B. A. (2010). Music as a memory enhancer in patients with
Alzheimer’s disease. Neuropsychologia, 48(10), 3164–3167.
Smith, S. M. (1985). Background music and context-dependent memory. The American Journal of
Psychology, 98(4), 591–603.
Souchay, C., Isingrini, M., & Espagnet, L. (2000). Aging, episodic memory feeling-of-knowing, and frontal
functioning. Neuropsychologia, 14, 299–309.
Spector, A., & Biederman, I. (1976). Mental set and mental shift revisited. The American Journal of
Psychology, 89(4), 669–679.
Thaut, M. H., Peterson, D. A., & McIntosh, G. C. (2005). Temporal entrainment of cognitive functions.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1060(1), 243–254.
Thompson, W. F., Schellenberg, E. G., & Husain, G. (2001). Arousal, mood, and the Mozart effect.
Psychological Science, 12(3), 248–251.
Tillmann, B. (2012). Music and language perception: Expectations, structural integration, and cognitive
sequencing. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4(4), 568–584.
Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of
memory (pp. 381–402). New York, NY: Academic Press.
Tulving, E. (2002). Episodic memory: From mind to brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 53(1), 1–25.
Wallace, W. T. (1994). Memory for music: Effect of melody on recall of text. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(6), 1471–1485.
Zatorre, R. (2005). Music, the food of neuroscience? Nature, 434(7031), 312–315.
Zatorre, R. J., & Salimpoor, V. N. (2013). From perception to pleasure: Music and its neural substrates.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(Suppl. 2), 10430–10437.
by guest on September 30, 2015msx.sagepub.comDownloaded from