Schedule of Events | Symposia

Musical Context Facilitates Event Segmentation and Sequential Learning Through Interconnected Neural Networks and Strengthened Hippocampal Encoding

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Yiren Ren¹, Vishwadeep Ahluwalia², Claire Arthur³, Thackery Brown¹; ¹School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, ²Center for Advanced Brain Imaging, GSU/GT, ³School of Music, Georgia Institute of Technology

While music often serves as a potent memory cue, its potential to scaffold the learning of non-musical temporal sequences remains poorly understood. We investigated how familiar music modulates neural mechanisms supporting visual sequence learning using fMRI. Participants learned probabilistic sequences of images paired with either familiar music compositions or silence. During continuous image presentation, participants performed event segmentation while learning sequential relationships, followed by retrieval practice after each learning block. Behaviorally, at encoding music enhanced boundary detection (F(1,1007)=18.742, p<.001, ηp²=.02), as well as subsequent sequence recall accuracy ( t(86)=-2.292, p=.024) and retrieval practice performance when the music was no longer present (F(1,517)=9.522, p=.002, ηp²=.02). Whole-brain analyses revealed reduced prefrontal activation during music-accompanied learning, with enhanced engagement of subcortical regions (amygdala, thalamus) at sequence boundaries. The hippocampus and IFG exhibited earlier and stronger responses to sequence boundaries in the music condition, with their boundary-related activity uniquely predicting subsequent memory performance. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that music strengthened hippocampal-vmPFC coupling while reducing frontal-parietal connectivity associated with effortful sequence learning. Representational similarity analysis showed that music enhanced pattern similarity for within-sequence items in hippocampal subfields while reducing pattern separation demands for cross-boundary items. Furthermore, classification analysis demonstrated more distinct positional coding of visual sequence items in the hippocampus during music-accompanied learning. These findings suggest music facilitates sequence learning by providing clearer event boundaries, engaging schema-based learning through enhanced hippocampal-vmPFC connectivity, and promoting more efficient hippocampal representations of temporal order. This work reveals how structured auditory contexts can scaffold visual sequence learning.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic