Schedule of Events | Search Abstracts | Invited Symposia | Symposia | Poster Sessions | Data Blitz

The Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Music Memorability

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Jacob K Hankin¹, Grit Herzmann¹, Will Deng², Kara D Federmeier², Diane M Beck²; ¹College of Wooster, ²University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Music plays a central role in the human experience and interacts with cognitive processes such as memory and emotion. While the interaction between music and memory is well understood, the cognitive mechanisms underlying music memorability, or the likelihood that a piece of music will be remembered, are largely unexplored. Including musicians and non-musicians, the current study investigated the behavioral and neural correlates of music memorability in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment. Participants completed a continuous recognition task, in which they listened to five-second musical excerpts categorized as high or low memorability and indicated whether each excerpt was “new” or “old.” This was followed by a rating task assessing perceived valence, arousal, and representativeness of genre. Behavioral analyses indicated that participants were more accurate and responded faster to repeated highly memorable stimuli than repeated less memorable excerpts. In the rating task, high-memorability excerpts received overall higher ratings and were specifically judged as more arousing and representative of genre. ERP data, collected during the continuous recognition task, revealed that repeated high-memorability excerpts evoked larger old/new effects, with these excerpts eliciting higher amplitudes for both the FN400 (~300-500 ms) and the Late Positive Component (~500-800 ms) when compared to repeated low-memorability excerpts. These neural effects align with enhanced recognition accuracy and faster responses for high-memorability stimuli, indicating that more memorable music involves stronger memory processes. Future work will test whether statistical regularity or distinctiveness best explains what makes music memorable and will further explore how music expertise modulates both behavioral and neural sensitivity.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Audition