HMN 2025: How nostalgic music helps minds keep in mind

When you hear a track out of your youth—perhaps a highschool gradual dance or a street journey anthem—you are not simply reminiscing. You’re lighting up key areas of your mind.

A brand new study led by Assal Habibi of the Brain and Creativity Institute (BCI) on the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences discovered that nostalgic music engages each the mind’s default mode community, which is linked to reminiscence and self-reflection, and its reward circuitry. The findings, printed within the journal Human Brain Mapping, provide scientific perception into why music can function a robust software to assist individuals with Alzheimer’s illness and different memory-related situations reconnect with their past.

“Music is deeply intertwined with our sense of identification and private historical past,” stated Habibi, affiliate professor of psychology and neurology.

“What we’re seeing is that nostalgic songs do not simply carry again reminiscences—they activate the mind in ways in which might help emotional well-being and cognitive operate, particularly in people residing with reminiscence impairments.”

Using purposeful MRI to watch members’ mind exercise as they listened to songs tied to significant life occasions, the researchers uncovered a neural signature that will clarify music’s distinctive potential to evoke vivid, autobiographical reminiscences.

The analysis factors to a promising, nonpharmacological path for bettering high quality of life in individuals experiencing reminiscence loss—one which begins with a easy playlist.

In addition to Habibi, study researchers embrace corresponding and lead writer Sarah Hennessy, a former USC Dornsife graduate scholar who’s now a postdoctoral scholar on the University of Arizona; Jonas Kaplan and Talia Ginsberg of USC Dornsife; and Petr Janata of the University of California, Davis.