Study sheds light on how songs, movies and memories shape how people enjoy lighthearted entertainment
People have more memories associated with older media, appreciate content tied to memory more
Peer-Reviewed PublicationLAWRENCE — That song really takes me back.
We’ve all heard a song or seen a movie that brings back a memory or reminds us of an earlier time. A new study from the University of Kansas has found that people tend to have more memories associated with older songs and movie clips than newer ones, and they tend to be happier memories as well. People also tend to appreciate content that triggers a memory more, and the findings help shed light on why people often find meaning in lighthearted entertainment such as pop music or superhero movies.
Researchers played song clips from artists either from the current day or roughly 10 years ago and did the same with movie clips, then asked research participants about any associated memories from the samples. Older entertainment evoked more memories, and people appreciated older music more as well. They appreciated both forms more when they activated memories, regardless of when it was released.
“What we’re trying to do is understand what happens when we encounter media and how that affects us. We also look at the implications regarding our sense of identity,” said Judy Watts, assistant professor of journalism & mass communications at KU and a co-author of the studies. “People often travel mentally back to a time period when they re-encounter beloved media, but we want to unpack what exactly they’re experiencing when they do that. Did they have appreciation, happiness or other emotions? Music was picked for the first study because it tends to be especially nostalgic. The second study was designed to see if those same effects would happen with audiovisual cues.”
The studies, written with co-authors James Alex Bonus and C. Joseph Francemone of Ohio State University, was published in the Journal of Communication.
For the music-based study, more than 400 college students heard six song selections from an artist, released either in 2020 or roughly a decade earlier, during their early adolescence from artists such as Taylor Swift, John Legend or Charli XCX. They were asked whether the song activated a memory, and if so to describe the memory. They were also asked about their memory engagement with statements such as “I was so young and naïve in this memory,” “life was so much simpler at the time of this memory” or “I felt completely immersed in this memory.”
For the second study, more than 400 college students were similarly shown clips from a recent or older movie, such as “Frozen” or “Frozen II,” or “Avengers: Endgame” or “Guardians of the Galaxy.” They were then asked the same questions about whether the media had associated memories, and of what type.
As expected by the researchers, study one results showed older music produced more memory recall and the songs were more appreciated. Additionally, the memories associated with older music were also older, more positive and had more downward temporal comparisons — meaning participants felt that while the memories were positive, they also believed their lives were better now than at the time of the memory. Whether a memory was specific or more social did not vary widely, but several variables such as memory recall, memory immersion and positive effect were predictors of appreciation. That suggests people appreciate any type of entertainment that activates a memory, the researchers wrote.
The study with movie clips replicated most of the memory-related findings from that conducted with music, particularly older pieces of media having more associated memories, and those being older, more positive and having more temporal comparisons. One notable difference was that specific memories were a predictor of appreciation of the content versus general memories — and were associated with less appreciation. Also, appreciation did not differ between older and newer movies, but people had a higher level of appreciation overall for movies versus music.
The findings help further understanding of autobiographical memory and how media effects are part of such mental processes. While it has long been understood and accepted that a song, movie or other piece of popular media can trigger a memory, little research has been conducted on whether these memories result in meaningful experiences. In contrast, media effects research tends to focus on more “meaningful” media, such as highly regarded, classic or highbrow forms of entertainment, not necessarily lighter fare such as pop songs, superhero movies or other popular forms of entertainment, Watts said. Better understanding of the emotional outcomes of such media-induced reminiscence is important as well, as such media can potentially help people deal with stress and negative feelings. That is especially true of the temporal findings explored in the study, or whether people feel like life was better at the time of a memory induced by media, or if they are doing better now than when they were younger, and what types of memories are associated with appreciation of media.
“We tend to assign meaning to pieces of entertainment we experience in formative times of our lives. That’s typically cast off as something that’s not particularly meaningful,” Watts said. “But we think it matters because it’s about how you experienced it, often with people we care about, and when we revisit it, we can feel warm, happy or other emotions. We’re interested in the psychological processes of memory and media, and it is one way, I think, to speak to a person’s memories, how they connect media to a time, place or people.”
People have more memories associated with older media, appreciate content tied to memory more
Peer-Reviewed PublicationLAWRENCE — That song really takes me back.
We’ve all heard a song or seen a movie that brings back a memory or reminds us of an earlier time. A new study from the University of Kansas has found that people tend to have more memories associated with older songs and movie clips than newer ones, and they tend to be happier memories as well. People also tend to appreciate content that triggers a memory more, and the findings help shed light on why people often find meaning in lighthearted entertainment such as pop music or superhero movies.
Researchers played song clips from artists either from the current day or roughly 10 years ago and did the same with movie clips, then asked research participants about any associated memories from the samples. Older entertainment evoked more memories, and people appreciated older music more as well. They appreciated both forms more when they activated memories, regardless of when it was released.
“What we’re trying to do is understand what happens when we encounter media and how that affects us. We also look at the implications regarding our sense of identity,” said Judy Watts, assistant professor of journalism & mass communications at KU and a co-author of the studies. “People often travel mentally back to a time period when they re-encounter beloved media, but we want to unpack what exactly they’re experiencing when they do that. Did they have appreciation, happiness or other emotions? Music was picked for the first study because it tends to be especially nostalgic. The second study was designed to see if those same effects would happen with audiovisual cues.”
The studies, written with co-authors James Alex Bonus and C. Joseph Francemone of Ohio State University, was published in the Journal of Communication.
For the music-based study, more than 400 college students heard six song selections from an artist, released either in 2020 or roughly a decade earlier, during their early adolescence from artists such as Taylor Swift, John Legend or Charli XCX. They were asked whether the song activated a memory, and if so to describe the memory. They were also asked about their memory engagement with statements such as “I was so young and naïve in this memory,” “life was so much simpler at the time of this memory” or “I felt completely immersed in this memory.”
For the second study, more than 400 college students were similarly shown clips from a recent or older movie, such as “Frozen” or “Frozen II,” or “Avengers: Endgame” or “Guardians of the Galaxy.” They were then asked the same questions about whether the media had associated memories, and of what type.
As expected by the researchers, study one results showed older music produced more memory recall and the songs were more appreciated. Additionally, the memories associated with older music were also older, more positive and had more downward temporal comparisons — meaning participants felt that while the memories were positive, they also believed their lives were better now than at the time of the memory. Whether a memory was specific or more social did not vary widely, but several variables such as memory recall, memory immersion and positive effect were predictors of appreciation. That suggests people appreciate any type of entertainment that activates a memory, the researchers wrote.
The study with movie clips replicated most of the memory-related findings from that conducted with music, particularly older pieces of media having more associated memories, and those being older, more positive and having more temporal comparisons. One notable difference was that specific memories were a predictor of appreciation of the content versus general memories — and were associated with less appreciation. Also, appreciation did not differ between older and newer movies, but people had a higher level of appreciation overall for movies versus music.
The findings help further understanding of autobiographical memory and how media effects are part of such mental processes. While it has long been understood and accepted that a song, movie or other piece of popular media can trigger a memory, little research has been conducted on whether these memories result in meaningful experiences. In contrast, media effects research tends to focus on more “meaningful” media, such as highly regarded, classic or highbrow forms of entertainment, not necessarily lighter fare such as pop songs, superhero movies or other popular forms of entertainment, Watts said. Better understanding of the emotional outcomes of such media-induced reminiscence is important as well, as such media can potentially help people deal with stress and negative feelings. That is especially true of the temporal findings explored in the study, or whether people feel like life was better at the time of a memory induced by media, or if they are doing better now than when they were younger, and what types of memories are associated with appreciation of media.
“We tend to assign meaning to pieces of entertainment we experience in formative times of our lives. That’s typically cast off as something that’s not particularly meaningful,” Watts said. “But we think it matters because it’s about how you experienced it, often with people we care about, and when we revisit it, we can feel warm, happy or other emotions. We’re interested in the psychological processes of memory and media, and it is one way, I think, to speak to a person’s memories, how they connect media to a time, place or people.”
JOURNAL
Journal of Communication
Journal of Communication
DOI
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Randomized controlled/clinical trial
Randomized controlled/clinical trial
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
People
ARTICLE TITLE
When “meaningless” means more: biographic resonance and audience appreciation of popular entertainment
When “meaningless” means more: biographic resonance and audience appreciation of popular entertainment
Listen! Birdsong is good for mental health
Study investigates the influence of birdsong on mood, paranoia, and cognition
Peer-Reviewed PublicationIn the study, the researchers examined how traffic noise and birdsong affect mood, paranoia, and cognitive functioning by carrying out a randomized online experiment with 295 participants. These heard six minutes of either typical traffic noise or birdsong with varying numbers of different traffic sounds or birdsongs. Before and after hearing the sound clips, the participants filled in questionnaires assessing their mental health and performed cognitive tests. „Everyone has certain psychological dispositions. Healthy people can also experience anxious thoughts or temporary paranoid perceptions. The questionnaires enable us to identify people's tendencies without their having a diagnosis of depression, anxiety, and paranoia and to investigate the effect of the sounds of birds or traffic on these tendencies,“ says first author Emil Stobbe, Predoctoral Fellow at the Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.
The present study suggests that listening to birdsong reduces anxiety and paranoia in healthy participants. Birdsong did not appear to have an influence on depressive states in this experiment. Traffic noise, however, generally worsened depressive states, especially if the audio clip involved many different kinds of traffic sounds. The positive influence of birdsong on mood is already known, but to the best of the authors‘ knowledge, this study is the first to reveal an effect on paranoid states. This was independent of whether the birdsong came from two or more different bird species.The researchers also found that neither birdsong nor traffic noise influenced cognitive performance.
In the researchers‘ view, the explanation for these effects is that birdsong is a subtle indication of an intact natural environment, detracting attention from stressors that could otherwise signal an acute threat. Taken together, the results suggest interesting avenues for further research and applications, such as the active manipulation of background noise in different situations or the examination of its influence on patients with diagnosed anxiety disorders or paranoia.
„Birdsong could also be applied to prevent mental disorders. Listening to an audio CD would be a simple, easily accessible intervention. But if we could already show such effects in an online experiment performed by participants on a computer, we can assume that these are even stronger outdoors in nature,“ says Stobbe. He is a member of the Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, which studies the effects of the physical environment on the individual. „We were recently able to perform a study showing that a one-hour walk in nature reduces brain activity associated with stress,“ adds the research group’s head Simone Kühn. „We cannot say yet which features of nature – smells, sounds, color, or a combination thereof – are responsible for the effect. The present study provides a further building block to clarify this issue,“ continues Kühn. What is clear is that nature improves mental health and well-being. So, out we go!
JOURNAL
Scientific Reports
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Experimental study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Birdsongs alleviate anxiety and paranoia in healthy participants
Disappearing notes in classical tune highlight the dramatic loss of Humpback Whales
Business AnnouncementIMAGE: HEBRIDES REDACTED SCORE WITH NOTES SCRUBBED OUT TO REFLECT DECLINING HUMPBACK WHALE POPULATION view more
CREDIT: EWAN CAMPBELL
A Cambridge team frustrated by the apathetic response to biodiversity loss has developed a dramatic new way to highlight the demise of nature – and people are listening.
Driven by the observation that human activities are silencing nature, Dr Matthew Agarwala is using sound to convey the enormity of biodiversity loss - and help draw attention to what must be done to help species recover.
His collaboration with composer Dr Ewan Campbell is capturing the attention of new audiences by linking a piece of classical music: Mendelssohn’s ‘Hebrides Overture’, with the loss of an iconic species: the North Atlantic Humpback Whale.
Crucially, the roughly 30,000 notes in the original music score approximate to the number of Humpback Whales there were in the sea in 1829, when the piece was written. But then extensive commercial whaling began to cause a dramatic decline in the whale population - and by 1920, two thirds of all Humpback Whales were gone.
Campbell divided Mendelssohn’s score into decades, then scrubbed out notes in proportion to the decline of the whale population as the music - and time - progresses. The resulting piece, ‘Hebrides Redacted’, has proved to be a dramatically simple way for audiences to grasp the enormity of biodiversity loss over time.
A short film about the music, and its impact on live audiences, will be released online on Friday 14th October, 2022 as part of the Cambridge Zero Climate Change Festival.
The music was performed by the 38-piece Wilderness Orchestra at this year’s August Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire, conducted by Campbell and narrated by Agarwala. The audience response was overwhelmingly positive – and the piece received a standing ovation.
“It really was an uninitiated audience at the Wilderness Festival - people were there for a good time, not to be told that the world is falling apart through the medium of music from the 19th century. But somehow it worked,” says Campbell, Director of Music at Churchill College and Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.
“Over the past century we have seen nearly a million species pushed to the brink of extinction – nature is going quiet,” said Agarwala, an Economist at the University of Cambridge’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy.
He added: “Researchers – including me – have been sounding the alarm about the consequences of biodiversity loss for a long time, but the message isn’t landing. Music is visceral and emotional, and grabs people’s attention in ways that scientific papers just can’t.”
Hebrides Redacted doesn’t just fizzle out at the end. The duo also want to draw attention to the policies that would be needed to help Humpback Whale populations recover – so the last part of the piece looks into the future, allowing an optimistic 8% rise in whale population every decade.
“We can see when the oceans are better managed, whale populations can start to rebound,” says Agarwala.
He says that if the ocean food chain is protected through enforced marine protected areas, maritime freight re-routed to reduce the number of whales struck by ships, and ocean pollution minimised, the Humpback Whale population could fully recover. And so their music does the same.
“At its nadir, the score is thin and fragmented, with isolated notes reaching for a tune that is only partially present. But even in the face of devastating destruction, nature is resilient and always beautiful, and so even when two-thirds of the music is absent there’s still a delicate beauty, though a pale imitation of its once dramatic glory,” said Campbell.
He added: “Redaction is a word normally associated with censorship, and silencing history. I find it really apt for this piece of music - we’re showing how human activities have silenced nature.”
Agarwala and Campbell are excited by the power to engage public audiences when arts and sciences work together in this way. They have ideas for many more music projects, which they also hope will encourage policy-makers to take action to protect the natural world.
The Cambridge Zero Climate Change Festival 2022 includes a focus on ensuring the conversation around climate change is accessible to the general public. It runs from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th October.
Inspired by his 1829 trip to a sea cave - Fingal’s Cave - in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, Mendelssohn’s original music captures the beauty, power, and vitality of the sea just before the introduction of mechanised industrial fishing.
The orchestra performs 'Hebrides Redacted' at the 2022 Wilderness Festival, UK
CREDIT
Tom Besley
First, the full score is played by the Hebrides Orchestra. Then, after 1 min 51, the same piece is played by only 1 in every 16 notes remains - this represents the precipitous decline in the whale population since 1829. Ewan Campbell
Conscious perception of sound is carried by dedicated assemblies of neurons in the brain
The cerebral cortex organizes itself in specific neuronal assemblies when consciously perceiving sounds, generating “creative” patterns of activity
Peer-Reviewed PublicationIMAGE: ACTIVITY OF A SET OF NEURONS IN THE AUDITORY CORTEX DURING WAKEFULNESS (WHITE DOT) AND UNDER ANAESTHESIA (GREEN DOTS). EACH DOT CORRESPONDS TO AN ELECTRICAL IMPULSE FROM A NEURON. THE IMAGE OF THE CELL BODIES OF THE NEURONS IS SUPERIMPOSED ON THIS GRAPH. view more
CREDIT: © JOANNA SCHWENKGRUB, INSTITUT PASTEUR; ANTON FILIPCHUK, CNRS – INSTITUT PASTEUR
A new study co-led by Human Brain Project researchers in France has revealed how consciously listening generates sound-specific assemblies of neurons in the brain. While awake, hundreds of nerve cells at a time can coordinate to form these sound-specific patterns. Under anaesthesia, a brain response to auditory stimuli is still observed, but indistinguishable from spontaneous brain activity. The study, which combined in vivo experiments and computational modelling, has been published in Nature Neuroscience.
Even when we are unconscious, ongoing activity in the brain combines with sensory perception to respond and process stimuli. It is however still unclear if each stimulus is processed differently by this combined activity, or if the same underlying dynamics are responsible. Differentiating the neuronal activity during conscious perception, compared to non-conscious states, is still a complicated matter.
The study by HBP-researcher Alain Destexhe (Neuroscience Institute of Paris-Saclay University) and Brice Bathellier (Institut de l’Audition of Pasteur, Paris) now sheds new light on the brain’s response to sound during these states.
The scientists found that the cerebral cortex organizes itself in specific neuronal assemblies when consciously perceiving sounds, generating “creative” patterns of activity. Assemblies of hundreds of neurons are also present while the brain perceives auditory stimuli under anesthesia, but it’s only during wakefulness and awareness that specific ones emerge and become associated with specific sounds.
The researchers used an optical recording technique, calcium imaging coupled with multiphoton microscopy, to follow the activity of nearly a thousand neurons in the auditory cortex between the awake and anaesthetized states in mice.
To interpret the observed date, the team simulated different hypotheses about what determines the groups of neurons that are activated. This analysis showed that under anaesthesia, the likelyhood that a neuron becomes part of a response to sound is strongly influenced by its chances of becoming a part spontaneous activity, leaving less freedom to encode actual sound information. In the awake state, these two likelyhoods are more independent of each other, opening up larger possibilities to encode information in different ways.
Under anesthesia, the cortex responds to auditory stimuli, but this response evokes neuronal assemblies that are already present in the spontaneous activity in the absence of stimulus. If the stimulus is perceived while awake instead, the auditory cortex creates new assemblies, which are specific to each sound. By using a technique to image the auditory input fibers, the researchers also showed that the new assemblies are generated purely at the cortical level.
“Compared to unconscious states, the cerebral cortex gets more creative while awake and invents new patterns of neuronal activity in response to each sound. This creativity appears to be an important correlate of sensory perception” says Alain Destexhe.
The data, collected by the CNRS-NeuroPSI and Institut de l'Audition, and the computational analysis carried out within the Human Brain Project, will be made available on the digital research infrastructure EBRAINS.
Text by Roberto Inchingolo
JOURNAL
Nature Neuroscience
ARTICLE TITLE
Awake perception is associated with dedicated neuronal assemblies in the cerebral cortex
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