But we don’t need science to tell us how powerful the connection between music, memory, and emotion can be. We’ve all had the experience of hearing a song that immediately makes the whole emotional content of a time long past wash over us as if it were current and present. 

What is it about music that’s so emotional and powerful? I wrote earlier about  muscle memory, and how you can sometimes find a window into a part of someone you love that goes deeper than the memories themselves. For Tony Bennett, you can see that his depth is not just about the music, although he is able to call up almost every note and every lyric, and his rhythm is flawless. But it’s more than that. It’s his familiarity with the whole experience, his response to the love from the audience that brings back the performer in him. This is an aspect of him that’s so deeply embedded in his personality that he taps directly into it, apparently bypassing the part of his brain that’s compromised by Alzheimer’s.

Our brains possess a remarkable ability to make, store, and retrieve memories of music, even if we’re not talented musicians. But how does it work and why does music seem to be protected from dementia? How can we tap into those things now—and how can we help someone with dementia tap into them? 

To understand what gives music this special power, let’s look at the brain’s map. To form and retrieve long-term memories, multiple regions of the brain work together to form a network that transmits information from one region of the brain to another. So, when you remember something you saw earlier in the day, you are accessing your occipital lobe, which is connected to vision. When you remember what you were thinking about earlier or wondering about something that occurred, you are using your frontal lobe (which is important for thinking). Music memories are stored in an area within the temporal lobe called the auditory cortex, which is connected to hearing. When you envision the more distant past or imagine the future, all of these different representations are put together in a specific region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is located within the temporal lobes. Here is where we form memories. 

Because music memories are stored in a different part of the brain, it activates the brain through alternative connections. This may be how music seems to thwart cognitive decline.

When trying to connect with someone who has dementia, consider triggers that are visual and auditory and are also tied to emotional experiences. For example, many people with Alzheimer’s light up when they see a baby or young child, even if they don’t know the baby—because it’s the familiar delight that comes with the sight, sound and smell of babies that’s important at the moment. Also, look for purely sensory experiences, ones that don’t require any thinking or remembering. This could be as simple as a sweet breeze or a smell or taste that is strongly associated with memories—as well as, of course, music itself. 

For Tony Bennett this last concert was a celebration of a lifetime of performing. Tony is a shining example that the common thread in all these deep memories is artistic beauty, which bypasses the mind and goes straight to the heart.