How can an environmental stimulus(such as a specific piece of music) stimulate powerful emotional memory?

Question

Think of your earliest memories. Do they contain this emotional aspect? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Somewhere in your brain an event or action happened from your past. We may get over the hardships of the past but they are not forgtten.
My mom passaway when I was 12, I am over the event but somethings come up to make me cry or want to over a thought of her. It has been years sence the death of her, but it is still in me.

Answer 2

There are definitely things like music that remind me of childhood and can take me back there. Whilst remembering, I think, the feelings and emotions from that moment that you remember, are re-created.

I believe it's because the stimulus acts as a 'cue' so you can remember the time and those emotions.

It's well proven that cues are important in memory, and one of the main reasons for forgetting in the long term memory is not that the information isn't there, but that we do not have the correct cues to access it.

In your example, the enviromental stimulus such as the music, acts as a cue, and the memory it brings forth includes the emotions from that time.

Emotions are a powerful thing and we off course store emotions we have felt before in our memory, because of how big a part they pay in experiencing life. It's only reasonable that when remembering something, we will recall the emotions along with say physical things such as a place we were in etc.

Answer 3

"Our two minds .... One is an act of the emotional
mind, the other of the rational mind. In a very real
sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that
feels" (Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence,
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 1996, page 8).

The Upanishads call the emotional component of mind as
Chitta and the rational component of mind as Manas.

Chitta is the component connected with intuition.
Modern psychologists say that passions have the same
limitations of senses as they tend toward immediate
emotional discharge. Chitta is the quick acting
component of the mind which can be termed as leftist or
negative thinking part. It is called negative because
some psychologists felt that it separates the received
information into pieces, contains unintentional and
contradictory ideas, and lacks internal organisation,
inner consistency, and concrete solutions. On the
contrary, some philosophers thought that this is the
'idealistic view' of thinking about a problem. Chitta
is connected with instincts, urges, impulses, desires,
emotion, imagination, sentiments, passions, caring,
pleasure, exploration, unconventional ideas, moods,
insight, superstitions, immodesty, immorality, analysis
of details, concern about particular features, capacity
to find novel relationships, unrestrained expressions
connected with body or mind, molding of past
experiences into new constellations of meanings,
creation of artistic, poetic and musical works and the
like. Seeing a good work of painting or listening to
music of one's liking will set waves of emotion in
Chitta. It helps us to imagine things in new ways. It
is known that lighter side of life like fun may contain
silly and ridiculous situations. An artist is said to
go to the extremes to divorce himself from
environmental constraints.

Music transcends the limitations of emotional mind and
rational mind.

Some modern western musicians wrote that music is a
higher revelation than wisdom and philosophy. Ancient
Hindu texts wrote that music transcends all limitations
of language and races. It is known to many of us that
babies, animals and even snakes enjoy listening to
music.

One Sloka says the same:
"Sisur vetti pasur vetti, vetti gaana rasam phanihi"

Ancient Indian texts say that even a foetus in the womb
can enjoy the music.

Poets described that soft music moves the chord within
like a moon beam that tranquillizes the mind, and acts
like an orison.