title: The effect of background music on episodic memory and autonomic responses: listening to emotionally touching music enhances facial memory capacity.
abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate how background auditory processing can affect other perceptual and cognitive processes as a function of stimulus content, style and emotional nature. Previous studies have offered contrasting evidence, and it has been recently shown that listening to music negatively affected concurrent mental processing in the elderly but not in young adults. To further investigate this matter, the effect of listening to music vs. listening to the sound of rain or silence was examined by administering an old/new face memory task (involving 448 unknown faces) to a group of 54 non-musician university students. Heart rate and diastolic and systolic blood pressure were measured during an explicit face study session that was followed by a memory test. The results indicated that more efficient and faster recall of faces occurred under conditions of silence or when participants were listening to emotionally touching music. Whereas auditory background (e.g., rain or joyful music) interfered with memory encoding, listening to emotionally touching music improved memory and significantly increased heart rate. It is hypothesized that touching music is able to modify the visual perception of faces by binding facial properties with auditory and emotionally charged information (music), which may therefore result in deeper memory encoding.
authors.affiliation: Milan-Mi Center for Neuroscience, Dept. of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1 Milan, 20126, Italy.
authors.forename: Alice Mado
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Proverbio
authors.forename: C A Alice
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Mado Proverbio
authors.affiliation: Milan-Mi Center for Neuroscience, Dept. of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1 Milan, 20126, Italy.
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Lozano Nasi
authors.affiliation: Milan-Mi Center for Neuroscience, Dept. of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1 Milan, 20126, Italy.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Alessandra Arcari
authors.affiliation: Milan-Mi Center for Neuroscience, Dept. of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1 Milan, 20126, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: De Benedetto
authors.affiliation: Milan-Mi Center for Neuroscience, Dept. of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1 Milan, 20126, Italy.
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guardamagna
authors.affiliation: Milan-Mi Center for Neuroscience, Dept. of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1 Milan, 20126, Italy.
authors.forename: Martina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gazzola
authors.affiliation: IBFM-CNR, Via Fratelli Cervi, Milan, 20090, Italy.
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zani
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D009146:Music; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult