It’s no secret that music is one of the most powerful things that makes us nostalgic, but a radical new approach to analyzing how we receive and store music through the use of brain imaging reveals provides a deeper understanding to why this is the case. Through analysing the auditory cortex and grouping clusters of brain cells, scientists have identified that neural pathways that react almost exclusively to the sound of music. Regardless of the type of music, a distinct set of neurons tucked inside the listener’s auditory cortex fires in response, while other sounds — such as water running, a fire engine’s sirens, or the sounds of traffic — leave the musical circuits unmoved.

How cool is that?!

As awesome as all that science is, something we find equally as groovy is just how much fun it is to share these circuit-firing songs with one another. Over the past few months, we’ve been sharing our love of music with you through our Music Monday posts, and while they’ve not only helped us explore and understand just how powerful the connections between music and nostalgia really are, they’ve also encouraged us to think about the songs that we’ve loved and cherished over the years (and helped to bring them back to life!).

These posts have also encouraged our readers to share with us their own nostalgic favorites, and since we’ve loved hearing their stories, it got us thinking: why not let our readers share their nostalgic music memories on a larger scale?

So with that, dear friends, we’re excited to announce that we will now be accepting guest submissions for Music Monday!

Knowing that we were going to be opening up Music Monday to our readers this week, we decided to see what the experience would be like for a potential contributor. And since so much of my own musical nostalgia was created by the music my parents played for me as a child, I decided to reach out to them so they could contribute some of their own nostalgia-inducing songs. Continue reading “What Music Makes You Nostalgic? (Now accepting reader submissions!)”