Music Helps People Remember New Info

Music helps people remember new things, according to a study from the Boston University School of Medicine.

They said in a news release that they found that people with Alzheimer's disease were better able to remember new information when it was provided as music. They even outperformed healthy adults.

In the study, people were presented with either spoken words or lyrics in a song, along with the text on a computer screen. They found that Alzheimer's patients were able to recall songs better when they were sung. But that was not the case for healthy people.

Study author Brandon Ally said that he had expected both groups to show a benefit. He said the results may show that people with Alzheimer's disease process information differently.

"Music processing encompasses a complex neural network that recruits from all areas of the brain, that are affected at a slower rate in AD compared to the areas of the brain typically associated with memory. Thus, stimuli accompanied by music and a sung recording may create a more robust association at encoding than do stimuli accompanied by only a spoken recording in patients with AD," he said.