# The effects of film music on neural activity in higher-order brain areas and comprehension for the film narrative

> **NIH NIH F99** · PRINCETON UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $46,520

## Abstract

Music is a powerful memory cue that can reliably transport us to our past -- in 
effect, strengthening the associative bond between our present and our past. Modern 
neuroscientific investigations of episodic memory could benefit from the use of music due to its 
role as a potent memory cue. In this proposal, my goal is to understand how music shapes memory 
 for past events and how these associations between events are represented in the brain. 
The proposed work builds on recent functional MRI studies that have used naturalistic experimental 
paradigms such as movie watching and recall to test and refine theories of memory 
that (previously) had only been tested under highly-controlled conditions. Here we explore how film 
scores shape memory for movies. In movies, film scores sometimes have recurrent structure where a 
particular theme song will be repeated throughout, potentially bringing back to mind information 
from previous events in which that theme song had been played. Based on prior work showing 
 that retrieval of a memory strengthens that memory, we predict that the presence of 
recurrent musical structure in a film will trigger retrieval of previous events during 
movie-watching, which (in turn) will boost memory for these events on a later recall test. In our 
study, two groups of participants are recruited: The first group watches a version of a movie in 
its original form (with the film score intact) and the control group watches the same film with the 
entire film score removed (while preserving dialogue and ambient sounds). Participants from both 
groups are asked to return the following day to recall the entire movie in chronological order. By 
comparing neural activity between scenes containing music and previous scenes containing the same 
(or similar) music between the two groups, we expect to find evidence of neural reinstatement of 
past scenes in the music group; furthermore, we predict that higher levels of reinstatement during 
movie-viewing will be associated with better subsequent recall of the movie in the music group 
relative to the control group. This work will provide basic-science insight into how memory works 
in real-world contexts. It will also shed light on how musical cues can strengthen memories and 
improve recall; if the predicted cueing effects are observed, these techniques could be used in 
future work to boost performance in memory-impaired clinical populations.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10071610
- **Project number:** 1F99NS118740-01
- **Recipient organization:** PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Jamal A Williams
- **Activity code:** F99 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $46,520
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-09-30 → 2022-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10071610

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10071610, The effects of film music on neural activity in higher-order brain areas and comprehension for the film narrative (1F99NS118740-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10071610. Licensed CC0.

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