Memory Retrieval in Ageing Adults through Traditional Music Genres—An Experiment Based on Electroencephalography Signals

Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between exposure to traditional musical styles and memories retrieved by Spanish ageing adults living close to the region of Murcia. The objective is to discover alterations in brain activity when memories are generated from listening to rhythms that the participants heard during their youth. Brain region activation is observed after the acquisition, processing and analysis of electroencephalography (EEG) signals. For this, an experiment is designed, where first each participant responds to the positive and negative affect scales (PANAS) questionnaire to determine his/her affective state. Then, he/she listens to eight ad-hoc composed music pieces of varied styles (twist, swing, fandango, petenera, bolero, habanera, pasodoble and jota murciana). After listening to each composition, the participant is asked if memories have been recalled during the performance, which enables the interaction person–music style into classes “MEMORY-EVOKED” and “NO-MEMORY-EVOKED”. Lastly, after the eight music pieces, the PANAS questionnaire is given again to determine the new emotional state after being exposed to the musical styles. From this experiment, three different studies are introduced. A first within-subject study looks for significant differences in the activation of brain regions between “MEMORY-EVOKED” and “NO-MEMORY-EVOKED” classes by analyzing the EEG recordings corresponding to each complete musical piece lasting 60 s. The second within-subject study decomposes the EEG records of each musical piece into four 15 s segments, and repeats the approach. Finally, a between-subjects study determines if there are significant differences between all “MEMORY-EVOKED” and “NO-MEMORY-EVOKED” segments. The promising results, although preliminary, show that there are significant differences in terms of “MEMORY-EVOKED”/“NO-MEMORY-EVOKED” classes in the prefrontal cortex for alpha, beta, theta and gamma frequency bands by using the spectral power method.