If you can’t recall your mother’s birthday but can readily belt out all the lyrics to “Piano Man,” welcome to the club. Music and melody seem to have a unique place in memory, Amherst College cognitive scientist Matthew Schulkind suggests. His studies with older adults explore why pop songs grab hold of our memories—and whether music could help dementia patients reconnect with lost knowledge.
Why is it so easy to sing along with old Top 40 songs when it’s so hard to remember things you actually tried to learn, like French verbs or algebra? To a certain extent, musical memory is procedural rather than declarative. Declarative memory is your memory for facts, like the Spanish word for dog. Procedural memory is your memory for skills, such as how to hit a tennis ball. This doesn’t take conscious thought. Once you start the swing, it just happens. Similarly, once you get ...
