Take Me Back
On The Reminiscence Bump & Time Travel Through Song & Snacks
‘If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately’ Stephen Hawkings (Brief Answers to the Big Questions)
The scientific community has come to a general consensus that time travel is just not a realistic possibility. But there are some things that live outside the realms of realistic or possible, that just happen.
Two days ago I was in my hometown and returned to the little bakery that was next to the school I went to as a little kid and purchased the same vege pastie (with sauce/ketchup) that I ordered for lunch at least 3 days of the school week. I kept my expectations low, because nothing stays the same forever (thank you for teaching me that Hush, see below), but oh my gosh that little golden flaky pastie filled with cheesy al dente cubes of potato and carrot was a catapult in disguise that flung me right back to 1977. The world receded around me for actual moments as I existed simultaneously in both the exultant here and now, grateful for the chance to momentarily taste the sweet innocence and ignorance of the past, and yesteryear, where all I cared about was eating my lunch before the bell went. Take that scientists of the world!
Time travel apparently violates the second law of thermodynamics; entropy or randomness must always increase. Time can only move in one direction - unsmashing a plate is not possible. Irreversible phenomena.
Between our ears resides the hippocampus, which resembles a seahorse (see below), and its function is to record and store our feelings, sensations and perceptions as they occur, and then tag them in the filing cabinet of our memories for easy retrieval. What you focus on or pay attention to determines the strength of your memory. Isn’t it crazy to realise that everything we know about our pasts is stored in a 40-50mm seahorse-y warehouse.
For me, like many people born in the 70s, hearing an ABBA or KISS hit will stimulate a rush of nostalgia ( I am the Dancing Queen!) that makes singing along or physically responding to the song in some way almost impossible to resist, even if its a song I don’t necessarily love. When we hear music that we’ve heard before, our brains both recall the auditory data and the associated sense memories that accompany hearing that particular music - food, events, people, weather, a certain time or feeling, which triggers a type of nostalgia or a homesickness type response. Most of our ‘sense of self’ is formed between the ages of 10 and 30, supported by the construction of life stories based on autobiographical memories. This time period is referred to as ‘the reminiscence bump’ as it is the time period that we tend to associate most strongly with our memories. A secondary ‘reminiscence bump’ occurs when people experience major life changes later in life, such as relocating countries - as ‘the key to the reminiscence bump lies in the theory that memories from this time are of “self-defining” experiences’ (Fitzgerald, 1988; Singer & Salovey, 1993). Stimulating that sense of nostalgia also gives us a dopamine hit - I’m no scientist but I’m thinking that could explain why so many people get stuck in listening to the same music they discovered in that ‘reminiscence bump’ time period, rather than continuing to seek out new music. They become addicted to time travel through song. This is also why using familiar samples in new music can fast track a song into hit territory. Out with the new and in with the old!
There’s an avalanche of evidence for the extraordinary healing power of music, especially in the arena of memory, and specifically with regards to the decline of it through Alzheimer’s and other disease. Listening to a favourite piece of music can return people suffering from severe memory decline to their old selves. A new interaction developed at Institute for Therapy through the Arts (ITA) called ‘Musical Bridges to Memory’ creates emotional connections between patients and caregivers by playing music from the patient’s youth live for them to experience together, leading to reduced anxiety and agitation plus better cognitive and communicative outcomes. Non communicative dementia patients have become animated, singing and dancing when they hear the music they love. Music awakens and stimulates mental pathways that nothing else can touch. Listening to music that is meaningful to us engages broad neural networks, lifting moods and feelings of pleasure.
If you want to step back in time and soak up that dopamine hit, even if just for a couple of minutes, take a bite of something you love from your younger life, turn up a song you love that evokes a place in space and time that only you know, and go with that liminal flow.
What takes you there?
Lo x
Thanks for another great post, Lo. I never knew what the hippocampus looked like, although I remember reading that it looked like a seahorse. As a lifelong SciFi fan, I often wondered what I would change if I could go back in time. I wrote a song called Time Machine and as I was writing it, I was going through the thought process, not being sure whether I would do it again, to have another shot at decisions I had made, but of course the potential paths are as infinite as the choices we made over the years, and all of them would probably see future's without my wonderful family.
As to dementia, there are wonderful stories of people who have been incommunicado for long periods of time, either remembering music while disassociated from the memories, or coming back with lucidity. It is a shame that more work isn't done in those areas of study, which is probably, sadly, because most of those people don't pay taxes anymore. However, if the effects of pollution in the atmosphere and our environment continue the way they are, Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia may starting occuring to large numbers of people at a much younger age. That being the case, this could be a lot more important.
One of the motivators behind my Stubstack is that with so many songs or works of music, I can relive times that are anchored to them. Most people can tell you what they were doing when they heard certain songs. Sights, smells, people, it all gets anchored in that little library with massive capacity :)
Love this post Lo - so informative! The week Charlie was born I played Radiohead's The Bends on repeat day and night for a week straight. That album can take me right back to that exact space. The last phone call I ever had with Glenn was him calling me and playing Outcast's Hey Ya into the phone. . . . for the entire song. On the day of his funeral, we drove around Adelaide in his car listening to it. His main 3am favorite song was "A Little Less Conversation" so we buried him to that one. You're right, music and Aussie tuck shop foods are both powerful time machines. I'm too scared to eat a pink finger bun. I'll just leave 8th grade right where it is. xoxo