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A researcher explores ‘musical daydreams’ and a song’s power to move us 19%
By Danny Wicentowski0%
5/5/2026, 9:00:00 PM
Topics: Radio Episode
BS Summary: This article contains 1 faulty reasoning type, including Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, with Attempt to Sell a Product or Service as the most egregious example at 14.3% saturation with 68 hits. Analysis detected 68 faulty-reasoning hits from 477 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.5% and a BS Rank of 19% (17,903 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 81.80% of the article peer group.
Music has the power to conjure memory and emotion.
For researcher Elizabeth Margulis, the essence of this musical experience comes down to a feeling of transportation.
“You might find yourself listening to a song, and it feels like your attention has drifted slightly,” the St.
Louis native and Princeton University professor said.
“Maybe you stop noticing the details of your environment that you're really existing in, and instead find yourself transported to some memory from your past, often quite vividly, or some fictional scene that you've never really experienced.”
Such occurrences produce a distinctive “inner-thoughtscape,” said Margulis, who directs Princeton’s Music Cognition Lab.
She describes the sensation as a “musical daydream.”
The concept is introduced in Margulis’ new book, “Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams,” which chronicles her research into music’s impact on cognition.
“I had discovered cognitive science and the way that you could use methods from psychology, neuroscience and computational modeling to ask questions about how humans make sense of music,” she said.
Tuesday’s conversation on St.
Louis on the Air included examples from several listeners sharing their own deep connections to music.
On Facebook, Diane Haller commented that the Beatles song “In My Life” transported her to the first Christmas after her father died.
“My mom surprised me with the album on Christmas morning.
When I hear that song, I can still smell the scent of our Christmas tree, the smell of the Christmas tree lights and feel the sadness of my dad not being there,” she wrote.
“I was 14 and it was 1968.”
The connection between music and memory isn’t always so clear.
One of Margolis’ unexpected findings was that an individual's musical daydream might have little to do with the song that triggered it.
When music provokes a strong memory or emotion, "We're lost in our own world,” she said.
“But in our research, we're showing that the places we go to, we tend to have been brought there by something about the sound.
The sound is doing something, it's having an important role.
It just isn't the key.”
To learn more about music, cognition and memory with “Transported” author and St.
Louis native Elizabeth Margulis, listen to “St.
Louis on the Air” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or click the play button below.
Related Event
What: Elizabeth Margulis - Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams
When: 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
May 18
Where: Left Bank Books, 399 N.
Euclid Ave., St.
Louis, MO 63108
“St.
Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St.
Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region.
The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer.
Layla Halilbasic is our production assistant.
The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
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0%flagged-word coverageElizabeth Margulis
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