Neue Forschungsergebnisse zeigen, dass emotional anregende Musik bestimmte Arten der Erinnerung verbessern kann, während entspannende Musik dazu beitragen kann, negative Erinnerungen zu verblassen. Diese Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass kostengünstige, musikbasierte Interventionen eine unterstützende Rolle bei der Bewältigung des kognitiven Verfalls spielen könnten

Listening to music immediately after learning new information may help improve memory retention in older adults and individuals with mild Alzheimer’s disease. A new study published in the journal Memory provides evidence that emotionally stimulating music can enhance specific types of memory recall, while relaxing music might help fade negative memories. These findings suggest that low-cost, music-based interventions could play a supportive role in managing cognitive decline.

The results showed that emotional memory was largely preserved in both groups. Both the healthy older adults and the patients with Alzheimer’s remembered emotional pictures better than neutral ones. This confirms that the ability to prioritize emotional information remains functional even when other cognitive processes decline.

The type of music played after the learning phase had distinct effects on memory performance one week later. For healthy older adults, listening to the emotionally arousing music led to better delayed recall. They were able to describe more of the positive and neutral pictures compared to those who listened to white noise. This suggests that the physiological arousal caused by the music helped lock in the memories formed just moments before.

For the participants with Alzheimer’s disease, the benefit manifested differently. The arousing music did not increase the total number of items they could recall. It did, however, improve their accuracy in the recognition task. Patients who listened to the stimulating music made fewer false recognition errors one week later. They were less likely to incorrectly confuse a new picture for an old one.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2025.2573267