Music will never cease to amaze me. I've been studying music for 16 years now and yet every new study that comes out concerning the effects of music on the brain just blows my mind. Just look at music therapy. There are people out there who suffer from aphasia (a language disorder that affects a person's ability to communicate), but because speaking and singing come from two different areas of the brain, they can learn to regain their ability to speak through singing. That is insanely powerful.
If music can have that great of an effect on our brain, think of what it can do in terms of memory and thinking. Think, for example, of what it can do it terms of studying for finals (because we all know those are approaching extraordinarily fast).
In 2014, a group of scientists worked together to determine what listening to music does to the brain by using a fMRI machine. Each participant was asked to rank 11 genres in order of least to most preferred, then listened to six songs each from a different genre with one being their self-proclaimed favorite song. What they discovered was:
when listening to complete songs, there are consistent patterns of network connectivity that exist within the brain that are related to preference. Our findings reveal that liked, disliked, or favorite music dictates this functional connectivity, regardless of the type of music or the presence or absence of lyrics.
They also discovered that when listening to liked and disliked music, the parts of the brain associated with the auditory cortex included the hippocampus, which is an area associated with consolidating memories. What these findings suggest is listening to liked and disliked music activates the encoding process of memories. Encoding is when the information that we receive to our brains is broken down and stored in our memory. It can later be retrieved and decoded. When listening to favorite songs, however, the auditory cortex did not connect with the hippocampus. What this suggests is that listening to our favorite song retrieves "emotionally-laden autobiographic and episodic memories." In other words, our favorite songs remind us of certain memories or points in our lives.
That is absolutely incredible.
With this being the case, it is safe to assume that music can have a great impact on your ability to retain information while studying and the best part? You don't have to struggle through Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to do it (which is a beautiful piece, but let's be real here). This study proves that, regardless of your preferred type of music, it can help increase your ability to store new information for the long term.
However, if you're like me and music with lyrics and layers of beautiful harmonies makes you want to stop everything and write five songs, then check out this Spotify playlist. It has done wonders for my focusing abilities.
Good luck on finals everyone!
