Hennessy Sarah, Janata Petr, Ginsberg Talia, Kaplan Jonas, Habibi Assal
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Center for Mind and Brain, University of California Davis, Davis, California, USA.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2025 Mar;46(4):e70181. doi: 10.1002/hbm.70181.
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.
怀旧是一种常由音乐引发的混合情绪。怀旧音乐可能会使认知能力下降的个体的自传体记忆得到暂时改善。然而，音乐引发怀旧情绪及其相关记忆改善背后的神经机制尚不清楚。为了最终理解引发怀旧情绪的音乐如何帮助认知障碍个体找回自传体记忆，我们首先试图了解这些过程在健康的年轻人和老年人中的神经基础。包括缺乏个性化定制和实验控制刺激在内的方法学限制阻碍了我们对这一机制的理解。在这里，我们利用一种基于机器学习的创新方法构建了三类歌曲，所有歌曲在音乐特征上均相匹配：（1）个性化怀旧歌曲，（2）熟悉的非怀旧歌曲，（3）不熟悉的非怀旧歌曲。在57名参与者（29名年龄在18 - 35岁之间；28名年龄在60岁及以上）中，我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究了音乐引发怀旧情绪的功能神经关联。出现了四个主要发现：（1）与熟悉的非怀旧音乐或不熟悉的音乐相比，聆听怀旧音乐与默认模式网络、突显网络、奖赏网络、内侧颞叶和辅助运动区域的双侧活动相关，（2）心理生理交互作用（PPI）模型表明，聆听怀旧音乐涉及自我参照（后内侧皮层）和情感相关区域（脑岛）功能连接的增加，（3）在怀旧聆听期间，老年人在与怀旧相关区域的血氧水平依赖（BOLD）信号比年轻人更强，（4）虽然年轻人对怀旧音乐的BOLD反应与怀旧倾向和认知能力的特质水平因素相关，但老年人的反应与对音乐的情感反应有关。总体而言，我们的研究结果为理解音乐引发怀旧情绪的神经基础及其在未来临床干预中的潜在应用奠定了基础。
