“When the language part of the brain has been damaged, you can sometimes recruit the part that processes music to take over,” says neuroscientist Aniruddh D. Patel, author of “Music, Language, and the Brain.”

“Music neuroscience is also helping us understand Alzheimer’s. There are Alzheimer’s patients who cannot remember their spouse. But they can remember every word of a song they learned as a kid. By studying this, we’re learning about how memory works.”