You're saying looking at a photograph is like overfitting your brain to a specific aspect of a memory. I don't see how music association is any different in thi

You're saying looking at a photograph is like overfitting your brain to a specific aspect of a memory. I don't see how music association is any different in this regard. Looking at a photograph of a memory represents the memory in a certain basis. Listening to a song does the same thing, just on a different basis. So this idea of overfitting or potentially losing part of the original memory is not unique to photographs. I would guess that having as many associations as possible is the healthiest for any memory. This is also the principle behind mind palaces and other memorization techniques.