Teresa Lesiuk ^1* K E Dillon ¹ Gabriel Perez ¹ G Ripani ¹ B Levin ¹ X Sun ² Roger McIntosh ¹

• ¹ University of Miami, Coral Gables, United States
• ² Neurology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, United States

Researchers have shown that Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories (MEAMs) can stimulate long-term memory mechanisms while requiring little retrieval effort and may therefore be used in promising non-pharmacological interventions to mitigate memory deficits. Despite an increasing number of studies on MEAMs, fewer researchers have explored how MEAMs are bound in the brain. The current study sought to compare activation, indexed by fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (fALFF) during familiar and unfamiliar MEAM retrieval in a sample of 24 healthy older adults. Additionally, we sought to identify the effect on age-related gray matter volume (GMV) reductions in key regions impacting MEAM-related activation. In addition to a T1 structural scan, neuroimaging data were collected while participants listened to familiar music (MEAM retrieval) versus unfamiliar music. When listening to familiar compared to unfamiliar music, greater fALFF activation patterns were observed in the right parahippocampal gyrus, controlling for age and gray matter volume. The current findings for the familiar (MEAM) condition have implications for cognitive aging as persons experiencing age-related memory decline are particularly susceptible to volumetric reductions in the parahippocampal cortex. Post-hoc analyses to explore correlations between brain activity and the content of MEAMs was performed using the text analysis program Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Although yet to be determined, our findings suggest that MEAM-related activation of the parahippocampal cortex may be attainable in older adult populations diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment and/or prodromal Alzheimer's disease who exhibit aberrant neural patterns, including volumetric reductions.