Music listening is one of the most pleasurable activities in our life. As a rewarding stimulus, pleasant music could induce long-term memory improvements for the items encoded in close temporal proximity. In the present study, we behaviourally investigated (1) whether musical pleasure and musical hedonia enhance verbal episodic memory, and (2) whether such enhancement takes place even when the pleasant stimulus is not present during the encoding. Participants (N = 100) were asked to encode words presented in different auditory contexts (highly and lowly pleasant classical music, and control white noise), played before and during (N = 49), or only before (N = 51) the encoding. The Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire was used to measure participants’ sensitivity to musical reward. 24 h later, participants’ verbal episodic memory was tested (old/new recognition and remember/know paradigm). Results revealed that participants with a high musical reward sensitivity present an increased recollection performance, especially for words encoded in a highly pleasant musical context. Furthermore, this effect persists even when the auditory stimulus is not concurrently present during the encoding of target items. Taken together, these findings suggest that musical pleasure might constitute a helpful encoding context able to drive memory improvements via reward mechanisms.

听音乐是我们生活中最愉快的活动之一。作为一种有益的刺激，愉快的音乐可以改善在时间上接近的编码项目的长期记忆。在本研究中，我们从行为角度研究了（1）音乐愉悦和音乐享乐是否会增强言语情景记忆，以及（2）即使在编码过程中不存在令人愉快的刺激，这种增强是否也会发生。参与者 (N = 100) 被要求对不同听觉环境中出现的单词进行编码（高度和低度愉快的古典音乐，并控制白噪声），在编码之前和期间 (N = 49) 或仅在编码之前 (N = 51) 播放。巴塞罗那音乐奖励问卷用于测量参与者对音乐奖励的敏感度。 24小时后，测试了参与者的言语情景记忆（旧/新识别和记住/知道范式）。结果显示，具有高音乐奖励敏感性的参与者表现出更强的记忆能力，尤其是对于在高度愉快的音乐背景下编码的单词。此外，即使在目标项目编码期间听觉刺激不同时存在，这种效应仍然存在。总而言之，这些发现表明音乐乐趣可能构成一种有用的编码环境，能够通过奖励机制推动记忆力的提高。