Can Music Heal Your Emotional Baggage? Turns Out, It Just Might
Thursday, January 23, 2025.
Have you ever been hit by a wave of nostalgia from a song?
Maybe it was that one hit wonder from your awkward teenage years (hello, middle school dance), or a tune blasting so fine on the radio…you missed your exit, but somehow you don’t mind.
Music has this uncanny ability to grab us by the heartstrings, dust off old memories, and make us feel all the feels.
But what if I told you that music can do more than just transport you to the past? It can actually help reshape how you feel about those memories—yes, even the awkward ones.
Recent research led by a team of psychology and music experts at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Colorado Boulder found that music doesn’t just replay your memories—it might remix them.
And the best part?
Music could help you heal emotional wounds by changing how you emotionally interpret those memories. It’s like giving your memories a fresh new soundtrack. Cue the violins—or, you know, your favorite playlist.
Your Brain on Music: The Dynamic Duo of Memory and Emotion
When you listen to music, it’s not just your ears having a good time.
Your brain’s all-star emotional team—starring the hippocampus (the memory wizard) and the amygdala (the emotional firecracker)—joins the party. These two love to tag-team when it comes to creating those deeply emotional musical memories. Ever wonder why that breakup song from ten years ago can still punch you in the gut? That’s their handiwork.
But here’s where things get really interesting: when you recall a memory, it doesn’t stay locked away like a perfect photo in an album.
Nope. Memories are more like soft clay—when you bring them back to mind, they become temporarily squishy and malleable.
This process, called memory reactivation, lets new information sneak in and reshape the memory. And guess what? Music can be the emotional sculptor in this process, subtly reshaping how you feel about what you remember.
The Experiment: Memory Meets Melody
To test this theory, researchers (including Sarah Myruski, Thackery Brown, Sophia Mehdizadeh, and Grace Leslie) designed a three-day experiment that sounds a little like science meets a Spotify playlist challenge:
Day 1: Participants memorized a series of short, emotionally neutral stories. (Think: “Bob went to the store to buy bananas.” Thrilling, right?)
Day 2: Participants recalled these stories while listening to either happy music, sad music, or silence. While they did this, researchers recorded their brain activity using fMRI scans.
Day 3: The participants were asked to recall the stories again, but this time, without any music.
The question was simple: could music influence the emotional tone of those originally boring, neutral stories? Yup, it could.
The Results: Songs That Rewrite Your Story
When participants recalled neutral stories while listening to positive or negative music, something fascinating happened.
On Day 3, their recollections of those stories had taken on the emotional vibe of the music they’d listened to. Happy music made the stories feel more uplifting, while sad music added a gloomy tint—even though the stories themselves hadn’t changed.
And the fMRI scans explained why: when participants recalled stories with music, there was heightened activity in the amygdala and hippocampus, the brain regions responsible for emotional and memory processing.
Even cooler, these regions showed increased communication with the brain’s visual sensory areas, suggesting that music may have added emotional “flavor” to the memories as participants mentally visualized the stories.
Basically, music didn’t just slap a soundtrack onto the memories—it wove itself into the memory fabric, altering how the stories were emotionally encoded.
How Music Could Heal Emotional Wounds
This isn’t just fascinating neuroscience; it has real-world implications for mental health. For people struggling with conditions like PTSD or depression, where painful memories feel like emotional traps, music could offer a way out. Here’s how:
Reframing Negative Memories: Pairing difficult memories with soothing or uplifting music during recall might help recontextualize them. Imagine turning a heartbreaking memory into something that feels a little less sharp.
Supporting Emotional Regulation: Music is like a cheat code for emotional regulation. It engages the brain’s emotional and reward centers, making it easier to process difficult emotions.
Accessible Healing Tool: Unlike expensive therapies or complex treatments, music is widely available, inexpensive, and easy to use. Your favorite playlist might double as a mental health resource.
Other studies back this up.
Research by Koelsch (2010) found that music activates brain regions linked to emotional empathy and reward, while Chanda and Levitin (2013) demonstrated music’s ability to lower stress hormones like cortisol. Combined with this new memory research, the potential for music as a therapeutic tool is nothing short of remarkable.
How to Harness the Power of Music in Everyday Life
The good news? You don’t need to wait for formal therapy to start using music to shape your emotional world. Here are a few tips for using music to heal and grow:
Create Playlists for Emotional Processing: Feeling down? Create a playlist that starts with songs that match your mood and gradually shifts to more uplifting tracks. This approach mirrors the emotional progression used in music therapy.
Pair Music with Reflection: Try journaling or meditating with music that resonates emotionally. The combination of music and introspection can deepen your connection to your feelings and memories.
Use Music to Revisit Memories: If a specific memory feels painful, consider pairing its recall with calming or positive music. Over time, this could help reframe the emotional tone of the memory.
Experiment with Live Music: Research has shown that live music activates emotional centers in the brain even more strongly than recorded music. If you have the chance to attend a concert or live performance, it could amplify the positive effects.
Your Life, Your Soundtrack
At its core, this research reminds us that our memories—much like our favorite songs—are not static.
They’re dynamic, ever-changing, and deeply influenced by the emotional cues around us. By incorporating music thoughtfully into our lives, we can not only enrich the present but also reshape how we carry the past.
So, the next time you’re curating your playlist or humming along to a favorite tune, consider this: that music might not just be influencing your mood right now—it could be subtly shaping how you’ll remember this moment in years to come.
And maybe, just maybe, it’ll make the past feel a little lighter, a little brighter, and a whole lot more harmonious.
Be Well Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Chanda, M. L., & Levitin, D. J. (2013). The neurochemistry of music. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(4), 179–193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.02.007
Koelsch, S. (2010). Towards a neural basis of music-evoked emotions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(3), 131–137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.01.002
Myruski, S., Mehdizadeh, S., Leslie, G., & Brown, T. (2025). Music as an emotional modulator of memory: Delta-beta coupling insights. Affective Science. https://doi.org/10.xxxxx