ArticleFrontiers in human neuroscience2014
Less Effort, Better Results: How Does Music Act on Prefrontal Cortex in Older Adults during Verbal Encoding? An fNIRS Study.
Article in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 87 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Systematic Review of the Application of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy to the Study of Cerebral Hemodynamics in Healthy Aging.Neuropsychology review · 2021Pooled it
- An integrative cognitive rehabilitation using neurologic music therapy in multiple sclerosis: A pilot study.Medicine · 2020Trial
- Mapping the brain networks underlying creativity enhancement via aesthetic experience.European journal of medical research · 2025Review
- Difference between Okinawan and Dutch older adults in prefrontal brain activation.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Article
- Combining transcranial direct current stimulation with music therapy improves cognitive function in schizophrenia: study protocol for a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled clinical trial.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- The effects of active and relaxing music on the short-term memory, attention and metabolic parameters of type 2 diabetes patients (T2DM).Medicine and pharmacy reports · 2025Article
- Cognitive Crescendo: How Music Shapes the Brain's Structure and Function.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- Brightening the Study of Listening Effort with Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy: A Scoping Review.Seminars in hearing · 2023Article
- Background Music and Memory in Mild Cognitive Impairment: The Role of Interindividual Differences.Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2023Article
- Reduced left dorsolateral prefrontal activation in problematic smartphone users during the Stroop task: An fNIRS study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- A Complex Combination Therapy for a Complex Disease-Neuroimaging Evidence for the Effect of Music Therapy in Schizophrenia.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Review
- Increase in Low-Frequency Oscillations in fNIRS as Cerebral Response to Auditory Stimulation with Familiar Music.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Musical components important for the Mozart K448 effect in epilepsy.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The impact of musical pleasure and musical hedonia on verbal episodic memory.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- The Mozart Effect on the Episodic Memory of Healthy Adults Is Null, but Low-Functioning Older Adults May Be an Exception.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Neurovascular Coupling by Functional Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy and Sport-Related Concussion in Retired Rugby Players: The UK Rugby Health Project.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
- Brain networks mediating the influence of background music on selective attention.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2019Article
- Is working memory training in older adults sensitive to music?Psychological research · 2019Article
- Music-related reward responses predict episodic memory performance.Experimental brain research · 2017Article
- The Influence of Music on Prefrontal Cortex during Episodic Encoding and Retrieval of Verbal Information: A Multichannel fNIRS Study.Behavioural neurology · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Several neuroimaging studies of cognitive aging revealed deficits in episodic memory abilities as a result of prefrontal cortex (PFC) limitations. Improving episodic memory performance despite PFC deficits is thus a critical issue in aging research. Listening to music stimulates cognitive performance in several non-purely musical activities (e.g., language and memory). Thus, music could represent a rich and helpful source during verbal encoding and therefore help subsequent retrieval. Furthermore, such benefit could be reflected in less demand of PFC, which is known to be crucial for encoding processes. This study aimed to investigate whether music may improve episodic memory in older adults while decreasing the PFC activity. Sixteen healthy older adults (μ = 64.5 years) encoded lists of words presented with or without a musical background while their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) activity was monitored using a eight-channel continuous-wave near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) system (Oxymon Mk III, Artinis, The Netherlands). Behavioral results indicated a better source-memory performance for words encoded with music compared to words encoded with silence (p < 0.05). Functional NIRS data revealed bilateral decrease of oxyhemoglobin values in the music encoding condition compared to the silence condition (p < 0.05), suggesting that music modulates the activity of the DLPFC during encoding in a less-demanding direction. Taken together, our results indicate that music can help older adults in memory performances by decreasing their PFC activity. These findings open new perspectives about music as tool for episodic memory rehabilitation on special populations with memory deficits due to frontal lobe damage such as Alzheimer's patients.
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