Background Music and Memory in Mild Cognitive Impairment: The Role of Interindividual Differences

Abstract

Background: Recent research has shown that background music may improve memory consolidation and retrieval. Nevertheless, in the clinical conditions preceding dementia such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), there is no current evidence speaking to what effect background music during memory tasks has on impaired cognition.

Objective: Across three experiments, we investigated if background music is able to improve memory performance, the most impacted cognitive domain in amnestic MCI.

Methods: We tested the effect of background music by using a face recognition memory task in patients with amnestic MCI. In Experiment 1, we tested the effect of background music on memory when it was played solely during an encoding phase. In Experiment 2, we explored effects of background music when played during both encoding and recognition phases. In Experiment 3, we explored the role of musically induced arousal on memory.

Results: The main finding from these three experiments was that background music played during a memory task did not improve or worsen participant performance. However, when exposed to high-arousal music, memory performance was predicted by individual mood regulation. For low-arousal music conditions, there was a negative relationship between rating scores for music pleasantness and performance on the memory task.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that the benefits of background music on memory in individuals with MCI are modulated by interindividual preferences towards music.

Keywords: Background music; cognitive stimulation; memory; mild cognitive impairment.

Fig. 1

Memory task and background conditions of the three experiments.

Fig. 2

Memory performance (d’ values) for the three experiments separated by conditions (Experiments 1 and 2: Music versus Silence; Experiment 3: High-Arousal versus Low-Arousal Music).

Fig. 3

Pre- and post-music exposure mood ratings across the three experiments.

Fig. 4

Partial regression plots for high-arousal music and BMRQ scores and for low-arousal music and pleasantness ratings scores.