‘Rock Around the Clock’

The power of memorable music to get your life on track!

How do you feel when you listen to one of your favourite tunes? What do you remember when you hear a song from your childhood? How are you affected by a track from at a significant moment in your life? Music can change your mood, your emotions, or trigger a particular memory. Hearing a song that you haven’t heard for a while can remind you of a time, place or people. That’s because music has an extraordinary ability to reach into the human brain, with more access routes into our ‘grey matter’ than any other stimuli.

Music has so many ways of shaping us as individuals - it strengthens learning, memory, and cognition, it boosts creativity, motivation, and stamina, it regulates mood, reducing heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and decreasing cortisol, reducing stress and anxiety, and it also helps the brain age gracefully!

This exceptional impact is due to a number of reasons; sound is processed more rapidly by the brain than images, and the patterns that are integral to music create cognition that goes beyond just language. It acts as a trigger to all kinds of emotions and memories. You hear, for example, the ‘dah-duh’ sound of Jaws and you think of sharks. Or the distant chimes of the Mr Whippy ice-cream van and you remember begging your parents for loose change!

Our own research and development has explored how to exploit this link between the power of memorable songs, the brain, and better mental health. Interestingly we have found that the link is not about identifying a favourite song but rather finding a song that triggers memory or perhaps an emotion. It’s all about the engagement with the song rather than a specific preference.

The fact that the focus of music for the last 70-odd years has been on the charts is quite helpful to our music-based applications. It means there are a relatively small number of songs that are well known by entire generations. By knowing the year in which a person was born we can select songs that maximise the recognition and emotional response. These songs can effectively ‘trigger’ the brain and even change a person’s mood. Our well-being apps tap into this musical-trigger effect to stimulate the brain using songs that are already held deep in the user’s memory. We have called this approach ‘song-task-association’ – the ability of music to connect to a need, action or feeling.

The principle of LifeTracks? is around building and supporting routines using memorable song notifications, helping the user achieve their goals during each day, reminded and supported by songs they immediately recognise and engage with. That quick dopamine hit generated by a remembered song can do wonders for the mood, and boost the chances of achieving a daily goal. LifeTracks is designed to support people who need to find focus, become easily distracted, or feel anxious about everyday activities. If these, often simple needs, dominate a person’s life they can lead to significant issues, but through using timed musical prompts associated with tasks, we can help these people manage their lives better. People living with ADHD/ADD, or with other cognitive challenges will also find that LifeTracks helps them manage life better and even support professional therapy.

Memory Tracks? works by the principle of ‘song-task-association’ where we link a memorable song to a care task, and by doing so lower agitation when care is being given. Agitation is the biggest issue in providing care to those living with dementia and has a significant impact on caregiver mental health and wellbeing. By decreasing agitation, we can improve the lives of caregivers and care receivers alike, reducing stress, staff turn-over and the use of often inappropriate medication. Memory Tracks is very much a caregiver’s support app, and our biggest reward since launching it has been the stories from carers of the smiles, the sing along moments, and the shared connections, making care much more relaxed. Nothing breaks tension like a song!

We are at the beginning of our journey, our vision of delivering easily accessible music to support better cognitive health, and happier lives. LifeTracks? has a music license in the UK with plans to expand this year to other countries. Memory Tracks? is licensed in the UK, US, Aus., and NZ.

Above all we need the support of people and companies that already work with cognitive diversity, or those who want to improve the lives of those living with challenges caused by cognitive issues and illness. If that’s you, we would love to hear from you!

www.memorytracks.net

www.lifetracks.net