Using Music for Content Retention

So you are having a big conference with amazing speakers, important insights, and powerful connections. It’s a significant investment of resources, perhaps most importantly an investment of your employee’s time and energy. Have you thought about how they are going to retain all the content? Notebooks, check. Slides, check. Printouts, check. Song Summary, what?

A diverse body of research is revealing the power of music to store and trigger core memories in our minds. The below excerpt from the Washington Post is an excellent summary of why memorializing important moments in your company with a song is proven to be something employees will remember and pull from when they literally forget everything else you’ve told them.

Evidence also exists that music prompts the secretion of brain neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a role in the brain’s reward/pleasure system. Other studies have shown that music reduces the stress-producing hormone cortisol and increases the secretion of oxytocin, which plays a role in labor and childbirth, as well as in infant-parental bonding, trust and romantic attachment.

“Music activates different parts of the brain,” making it an especially versatile tool, says Amy Belfi, assistant professor of psychological science at Missouri University of Science and Technology and principal investigator in its Music Cognition and Aesthetics Lab. “We can use it to improve mood, to help us learn, to socially bond with other people. It becomes part of our identity, like the soundtrack of our lives, which explains why it is so effective in stimulating and retrieving memories.”

To read the full article please visit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/26/songs-music-memory-connection/