What music really helps with studying?
Whether cramming for a test or just finishing up a calculus assignment, many students find that listening to music helps them study.
But whether or not music helps, and if certain genres help more than others, depends on the student.
Utah State University students listen to a wide variety of music while studying, but classical music seems to be a general favorite.
“I guess I just turn on the classical station on Pandora and listen to that,” freshman Jay Martinez said. “If a song has lyrics, I tend to focus on them instead of my homework, so I like classical because it’s mostly just instrumental. I think it helps me focus.”
The Mozart effect shows listening to classical music is supposed to make one smarter, so it makes sense that students desperate for any edge would put on some Mozart or Berlioz on top of their studying.
However, according to a study put out by Scientific Reports called “Network Science and the Effects of Music Preference on Functional Brain Connectivity: From Beethoven to Eminem,” this belief does not seem to reflect reality. Researchers used MRIs to track which areas of the brain were most active when various types of music were played.
According to the report, the brain’s response to music is extremely complicated and establishing one-to-one causal links is difficult. But the findings indicated global efficiency — how active the brain and how well all the parts of the brain are communicating with each other — was increased when subjects listened to a type of music they liked and was maximized when listening to a favorite song.
This is because listening to a favorite song changes the way the auditory brain areas connect to the hippocampus, a region of the brain responsible for memory, social emotion and consolidation, according to the report. The report went on to say that because musical preference is individualized and music composition varies, the consistency of the results were not what the researchers expected.
This research suggests that students would be better off listening to their favorite music while studying, rather than trying to find some magical genre that will somehow increase their mental prowess.
According to the report, “comparable emotional and mental states can be experienced by people listening to music that differs as widely as Beethoven and Eminem.”
This explains why some students seem to have rather eclectic tastes in studying music.
“It’s kind of weird, but I prefer Celtic folk songs while I’m studying,” said Colin Anderson, a theater and history senior. “The rhythm and beat help me focus.”
Business freshman Jessica Monsen has a very different take on music for studying.
“I like listening to heavy metal or punk rock or anything like that that’s fast and loud,” she said. “It sorta drowns out the distractions in my head and sort of forces me to focus.”
Whether a late-night cramming session results with the beats from Eminem or Mozart, students can look to their favorite music as a possible study-enhancer.
—austinlabonty@gmail.com
@GALaBonty