Music evokes vivid autobiographical memories
Abstract
Music is strongly intertwined with memories-for example, hearing a song from the past can transport you back in time, triggering the sights, sounds, and feelings of a specific event. This association between music and vivid autobiographical memory is intuitively apparent, but the idea that music is intimately tied with memories, seemingly more so than other potent memory cues (e.g., familiar faces), has not been empirically tested. Here, we compared memories evoked by music to those evoked by famous faces, predicting that music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) would be more vivid. Participants listened to 30 songs, viewed 30 faces, and reported on memories that were evoked. Memories were transcribed and coded for vividness as in Levine, B., Svoboda, E., Hay, J. F., Winocur, G., & Moscovitch, M. [2002. Aging and autobiographical memory: Dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval. Psychology and Aging, 17, 677-689]. In support of our hypothesis, MEAMs were more vivid than autobiographical memories evoked by faces. MEAMs contained a greater proportion of internal details and a greater number of perceptual details, while face-evoked memories contained a greater number of external details. Additionally, we identified sex differences in memory vividness: for both stimulus categories, women retrieved more vivid memories than men. The results show that music not only effectively evokes autobiographical memories, but that these memories are more vivid than those evoked by f…
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Authenticity is reconstructed through platform circulation, dataset choices, and human curatorial decisions rather than produced by the model alone.
“Ethnomusicological analysis emphasizes that authenticity is reconstructed through platform circulation, dataset choices, and human curatorial decisions rather than produced by the model alone [4].”
From From Oral to Aural: A Community-Led Methodology for Documenting Place-Based Histories through Narrative and AI-Generated Song (2026) · cites this paper as [4]
Overall, these results are consistent with the frequency, durability, strength and rich content of autobiographical memories associated with music.
“Overall, these results are consistent with the frequency, durability, strength and rich content of autobiographical memories associated with music (e.g., Gabrielsson, 2001, 2011; Janata et al., 2007; Belfi et al., 2015).”
From Listening Niches across a Century of Popular Music (2017) · cites this paper as Belfi et al., 2015
Cites
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007) · Behavior Research Methods · doi:10.3758/bf03193146 · Cited by 65,971 · see citing works
The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system
Conway, M. A., & Pleydell-Pearce, C. W. (2000) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.107.2.261 · Cited by 4,089 · see citing works
Blood, A. J., & Zatorre, R. J. (2001) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.191355898 · Cited by 2,814 · see citing works
Music-evoked nostalgia: Affect, memory, and personality
Barrett, F. S., Grimm, K. J., Robins, R. W., Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., & Janata, P. (2010) · Emotion · doi:10.1037/a0019006 · Cited by 547 · see citing works
Music, emotion, and autobiographical memory: They’re playing your song
Schulkind, M. D., Hennis, L. K., & Rubin, D. C. (1999) · Memory & Cognition · doi:10.3758/bf03201225 · Cited by 234 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Listening Niches across a Century of Popular Music
Krumhansl, C. L. (2017) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00431 · Cited by 90 · see citing works
The stability of visual perspective and vividness during mental time travel
Berg, J. J., Gilmore, A. W., Shaffer, R. A., & McDermott, K. B. (2021) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.concog.2021.103116 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
Mohammed, S. F. S. (2026) · International journal of research and innovation in social science · doi:10.47772/ijriss.2026.100800784
- Authors
- Belfi, A. M., Karlan, B., & Tranel, D.
- Affiliations
- University of Iowa (US)
- Corresponding author
- Belfi, Amy M.
- Venue
- Memory
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2015-08-10
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 979-989
- ISSN
- 0965-8211 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-0686
- OpenAlex
- W1576237535
- Cited by
- 186
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 38 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 23 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 1 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 3.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Memory (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Identity, Memory, and Therapy
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior
- Keywords
- memory cues, famous faces, sex differences in memory, perceptual detail, episodic memory
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Cues, Emotions, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Music, Sex Characteristics, Memory, Episodic
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
