The Department offers a wealth of opportunities for postdoctoral research in the wide range of scientific disciplines represented in the Brain & Cognitive Scien

Updated 09/08/2025

Music is a potent cue for recalling personal experiences, yet the neural basis of music-evoked memory remains elusive. We address this question by using the full-length film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to examine how repeated musical themes reactivate previously encoded events in cortex and shape next-day recall. Participants in an fMRI study viewed either the original film (with repeated musical themes) or a no-music version. By comparing neural activity patterns between these groups, we found that music-evoked reactivation of neural patterns linked to earlier scenes in the default mode network was associated with improved subsequent recall. This relationship was specific to the music condition and persisted when we controlled for a proxy measure of initial encoding strength (spatial intersubject correlation), suggesting that music-evoked reactivation may play a role in making event memories stick that is distinct from what happens at initial encoding. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. National Institutes of Health, https://ror.org/01cwqze88, F99 NS118740, R01 MH112357

Predicting individual behavioral traits from brain idiosyncrasies has broad practical implications, yet predictions vary widely. This constraint may be driven by a combination of signal and noise in b...

In the midst of these hard times, Erin Reed and Zooey Zephyr fight for you. Just as the trailblazers of the past fought for all of us to have a better world, they’re fighting for the trans community a...