Spontaneous mental replay of music improves memory for incidentally associated event knowledge

Why is music effective at evoking memories from one's past? Familiar music is a potent cue that can trigger, often involuntarily, the recollection of associated autobiographical memories. The mechanisms by which associations between music and nonmusical knowledge initially form and consolidate into long-term memory have not been elucidated. In three experiments, we linked two common musical phenomena, involuntary musical imagery (INMI; commonly called "earworms") and music-evoked remembering, in testing the hypothesis that such imagery aids in the consolidation of memory for events with which music becomes associated. We manipulated the probability of experiencing INMI for novel music loops by first exposing participants to these loops during tasks that varied in attentional and sensorimotor demands. Then, 1 week later, these loops served as soundtracks for unfamiliar movies. Immediately after movie viewing, and at subsequent delays of 1-4 weeks, participants recalled movie details, using the soundtracks as retrieval cues. The amount of INMI across the delay periods predicted both the accuracy of the memory for the music itself and the amount of recalled movie knowledge at the temporal granularity of the 30-s epochs during which individual loops played. We conclude that the replay of musical sequence memories during episodes of INMI serves as a consolidation mechanism both for the music and for associated episodic information. We thus demonstrate that spontaneous internally cued memory reactivation is a naturally occurring memory process that improves retention of real-world event knowledge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).