Caught Off Guard by a MEAM

Tonight, while listening to an internet radio station which plays obscure gems from the '60s and early '70s, I heard the opening notes of a song and froze.  It was vaguely familiar.  I listened intently as it progressed through the first verse.  Something started to happen in my brain.  The song was buried deep in my memory, from long ago, and my brain was attempting to reconstruct it as it went on.  When it climaxed at the chorus, I finally recognized it and my eyes welled with tears.  I was having what's called a MEAM - a Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memory.

The song was "I Ain't Got Time Anymore" by The Glass Bottle ((written by the late great Mike Leander and Eddie Seago and sung by Gary Criss), a beautiful but painfully sad song about the loss of a love.  I was just a kid when I first heard it on the radio in 1970.

Wanting to know more about this phenomenon, I found an article in Psychology Today called, "Why Do the Songs from Your Past Evoke Such Vivid Memories?" by Christopher Bergland, which explains the neuroscience of vivid musical memories.  Here are the main points:

Familiar songs light up areas in green 


 

• In a 2011 study, Finnish researchers discovered that listening to music activates wide networks in the brain, including areas responsible for motor actions, emotions, and creativity.
• In a 2009 study, researchers from UC Davis mapped the brain while people listened to music and found specific brain regions linked to autobiographical memories and emotions are activated by familiar music.
  
• Why do autobiographical memories linked to music remain so rich? If you haven't heard a song in years, the neural tapestry of that song stays purer, and the song will evoke stronger memories of a time and place from your past. The memories linked to overplayed songs can become diluted because the neural network is constantly being updated.