<< Previous       Next >>

Your Brain's Music Storage Spot The Department of Neurology at the Virchow campus in Berlin, Germany, has been studying a patient with severe amnesia, both retrograde amnesia - having little to no memory of the past - as well as anterograde amnesia - inability to recall new information, and have uncovered an interesting finding: "the patient was unable to recount any events from his private or professional life, or remember any of his friends or relatives, [but] he retained a completely intact musical memory. Furthermore, he was still able to sight-read and play the cello." The researchers theorize that our brains actually have a separate storage area for the retention of music. “The findings show that musical memory is organized at least partially independent of the hippocampus, a brain structure that is central to memory formation,” says Carsten Finke, the primary author of the study. “It is possible that the enormous significance of music throughout all times and in all cultures contributed to the development of an independent memory for music.”

<< Previous       Next >>