Music, Memory, and the Brain: Why a Song Can Reach Us When Words Cannot
Why can someone forget a name, a date, or even a recent conversation — yet still remember the words to a song from decades ago?
That question lies at the heart of my fascination with music, caregiving, and the brain.
I was recently listening to a YouTube conversation, “A Musician’s Journey Through Health, Heritage & Hawaiian Culture: Kahiau Lam Ho.” The discussion about music, health, heritage, and culture reminded me of something I have witnessed repeatedly as a geriatrician, palliative care physician, musician, and daughter:
Music can sometimes reach us when ordinary words cannot.
Watch the conversation
YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/GmKVqrgqF-4?is=OGRMuQfyib_XyOpq
This recent conversation with Kahiau Lam Ho about music, health, heritage, and Hawaiian culture prompted me to reflect on a question I often encounter in geriatrics: why can music sometimes reach a person when ordinary words cannot?
Music does not live in just one part of the brain
Listening to music is a remarkably complex neurological experience.
A song can engage systems involved in hearing, attention, movement, emotion, language, memory, and reward. Rhythm can make us tap our feet. Melody can evoke emotion. Lyrics can bring back words. And a familiar song can suddenly transport us to another time and place.
That helps explain why music can be particularly meaningful for people living with dementia.
Research suggests that musical memory may remain partly preserved in Alzheimer’s disease even when other forms of memory have become significantly impaired.
People may still respond emotionally to familiar music, recognize songs, sing along, or experience autobiographical memories connected to music.
This does not mean music cures dementia. But music can still be a powerful way to support connection, communication, comfort, and memory.
A song can become a doorway to memory
Families often experience this before they know the neuroscience behind it.
A person who speaks very little may suddenly sing every word of a familiar hymn.
Someone who cannot remember what happened that morning may smile when a song from youth begins to play.
A melody associated with a wedding, church, childhood home, or loved one may awaken not simply a factual memory, but an emotional memory.
That distinction matters.
In dementia care, our goal is not always to test what a person can remember.
Sometimes it is simply to find another pathway to connection.
Music can become that pathway.
This became personal for me
My mother, Phil, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2022.
After she died in January 2025, I began to understand my own work in caregiver education differently.
I had spent many years teaching health professionals and caregivers about geriatrics and palliative care.
But when serious illness came to my own family, I was no longer primarily the physician.
I was simply a daughter.
That experience eventually led me back to a promise my mother had made me make more than 25 years earlier:
“Compose a song.”
I told her I would.
I never did.
After her death, one song became two. Then four. Eventually there were 12 songs, exploring topics including advance care planning, swallowing difficulties, pain management, hospice, hearing, grief, and letting go. The Song I never Wrote
I called the collection Returning Home.
My personal reflection about that journey, “The Song I Never Wrote,” is now published ahead of print in the Journal of Palliative Medicine.
Why teach through music?
Caregiving information is often delivered when families are exhausted, frightened, or overwhelmed.
A lecture may be forgotten.
A handout may never be opened.
But a line from a song can stay with us.
That is one reason I became interested in using music not simply as entertainment, but as a vehicle for caregiver education.
Music gives information an emotional context.
It can create repetition without feeling repetitive.
It can invite reflection rather than simply deliver instructions.
And perhaps most importantly, music can help us remember the person behind the illness.
A diagnosis may change memory, language, or function.
But there is still a person who loved certain songs.
A person who danced.
A person who worshipped.
A person who fell in love.
A person whose life has a soundtrack.
Healing is not always curing
When we speak about music and healing, healing should not be confused with curing disease.
Sometimes healing is relief.
Sometimes it is connection.
Sometimes it is remembering.
Sometimes it is helping a family sit together when there are no more medical treatments to offer.
And sometimes it is hearing a familiar melody and, for a few precious minutes, finding one another again.
Perhaps that is one of music’s greatest gifts to the brain.
It does not always ask us to remember.
Sometimes the music remembers for us.
The Song I Never Wrote
Fernandes R. “The Song I Never Wrote.”
Journal of Palliative Medicine
Published ahead of print, 2026
DOI: 10.1177/10966218261478685
The essay tells the story of the promise that ultimately became Returning Home — a collection of music, art, and caregiver education created to bring important conversations about serious illness, caregiving, grief, and healing into the home.
For Phil. ❤️
Twenty-five years later, I finally kept my promise.
Not with one song.
But with 12.