Listening to Music from the Past Rekindles Memories and Activates the “Happiness Circuit” in the Brain

Listening to nostalgic music, chosen by the person themselves, activates parts of the brain linked to memory, emotion and pleasure. In the elderly, this reaction is even stronger, showing that music can be a powerful tool for recovering memories and generating well-being.

Nostalgia is a mixed feeling, which involves longing and emotion when remembering moments from the past, especially those that were happy. Listening to a song that marked an important moment in life can awaken this nostalgia in an intense way.

This type of emotion is not just a common memory; it can activate several areas of the brain linked to memory, emotions and even reward. This study sought to understand what happens in the brains of people, both young and old, when they listen to music that they themselves consider nostalgic.

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe the brains of 57 people (29 aged 18 to 35; 28 aged 60 or older) as they listened to three types of music:

1. Nostalgic songs chosen by the participants

   
   

2. Familiar songs that did not evoke nostalgic memories

   
   

3. Unfamiliar songs

All the songs were selected to have similar musical characteristics (such as rhythm and melody), which allowed for a more fair comparison of the emotional effects.

The results showed that listening to nostalgic songs provoked more brain activity than the other two types of music. Specifically, it activated areas linked to personal memory (such as the hippocampus), emotional processing (such as the insula), the reward system (which generates pleasurable feelings), and also motor regions, possibly due to the desire to move to the music.

Whole-brain results for the Nostalgia > Family Control group, across all participants. The color bar on the right (orange to yellow) indicates the level of brain activity (Z score): the more yellow, the greater the activation.

In addition, listening to nostalgic music increased the connection between these brain areas, showing that they work together more intensely in this context.

An interesting finding was that older people showed an even stronger brain response than younger people when listening to nostalgic music. This may indicate that, as we age, music gains even more power to evoke affective and meaningful memories.

A: The images show the areas of the brain that were more active when older people listened to nostalgic music, compared to just familiar music, and also compared to what was seen in younger people. The areas in yellow are the regions with the most activation. B: The graph shows how much the brains of younger (in red) and older (in blue) adults responded to two types of music: familiar (but not nostalgic) music and nostalgic music. The bars indicate that older adults had a stronger brain response to nostalgic music than younger adults. The color bar at the top (from orange to yellow) indicates the level of brain activity (Z score): the more yellow, the greater the activation.

For younger people, the strength of this response seemed to be related to personality traits (such as a tendency to feel nostalgic) and cognitive ability. In older people, the response was more linked to the emotion felt at the time of listening.

This research is important because it helps us understand how music can access important memories, especially in older people.

Knowing which regions of the brain are involved in this process could, in the future, help develop music therapies for people with memory difficulties, such as in cases of Alzheimer's or other types of dementia. The idea is that by stimulating these regions with meaningful music, it will be possible to reactivate important memories and improve the quality of life of these people.

READ MORE:

Music-Evoked Nostalgia Activates Default Mode and Reward Networks Across the Lifespan

Sarah Hennessy, Petr Janata, Talia Ginsberg, Jonas Kaplan, Assal Habibi

Human Brain Mapping. Volume 46, Issue 4, March 2025, e70181

https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.70181

Abstract 

Nostalgia is a mixed emotion that is often evoked by music. Nostalgic music may induce temporary improvements in autobiographical memory in individuals with cognitive decline. However, the neural mechanism underlying music-evoked nostalgia and its associated memory improvements is unclear. With the ultimate goal of understanding how nostalgia-evoking music may help retrieve autobiographical memories in individuals with cognitive impairment, we first sought to understand the neural underpinnings of these processes in healthy younger and older adults. Methodological constraints, including the lack of personally tailored and experimentally controlled stimuli, have impeded our understanding of this mechanism. Here, we utilized an innovative machine-learning-based method to construct three categories of songs, all matched for musical features: (1) personalized nostalgic, (2) familiar non-nostalgic, and (3) unfamiliar non-nostalgic. In 57 participants (29 aged 18–35; 28 aged 60 and older), we investigated the functional neural correlates of music-evoked nostalgia using fMRI. Four main findings emerged: (1) Listening to nostalgic music, more than familiar non-nostalgic or unfamiliar music, was associated with bilateral activity in the default mode network, salience network, reward network, medial temporal lobe, and supplementary motor regions, (2) Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) models indicated that listening to nostalgic music involved increased functional connectivity of self-referential (posteromedial cortex) and affect-related regions (insula), (3) Older adults had stronger BOLD signals than younger adults in nostalgia-related regions during nostalgic listening, (4) While the BOLD response to nostalgic music in younger adults was associated with trait-level factors of nostalgia proneness and cognitive ability, the response in older adults was related to affective responses to the music. Overall, our findings serve as a foundation for understanding the neural basis of music-evoked nostalgia and its potential use in future clinical interventions.