Many people find music helps them concentrate while studying and working. Others find it hard to focus with any background noise at all.

Music offers a lot of benefits, including:

• improved mood
• increased motivation
• boost concentration
• improved memory and brain stimulation
• better management of pain and fatigue

But not everyone agrees that music improves a study session. So what’s the deal — does it help or not?

Music doesn’t affect everyone in the same way, so the answer is not just a straightforward “yes” or “no.”

Keep reading to learn more about the pros and cons of studying with music and get some tips for making the most out of your study playlist.

How it can help

It would be fantastic if you could put on a playlist or song that could help you knock out a problem set or memorize all those dates for your history final, wouldn’t it?

Unfortunately, music isn’t quite that powerful. It mostly helps in indirect ways, but those benefits can still make a big difference.

It reduces stress and improves your mood

Music doesn’t just motivate you. It can also help reduce stress and promote a more positive mindset.

In a 2013 studyTrusted Source, 60 female volunteers carried out a psychological stress test while listening to relaxing music, sounds of rippling water, or no particular sound. Results suggested that listening to relaxing music makes a physical difference to the way people respond psychologically and physically — in terms of hormone response — under stress. However, the picture is complex, and more studies are needed.

In a 2021 studyTrusted Source, patients in ICU said they felt less pain and anxiety after listening to music for 30 minutes than before.

Research suggests that a good mood generally improves your learning outcomes. You’ll likely have more success with studying and learning new material when you’re feeling good.

Studying can be stressful, especially when you don’t entirely understand the subject material. If you feel overwhelmed or upset, putting on some music can help you relax and work more effectively.

It can motivate you

If you’ve ever grappled with a long, exhausting night of homework, your resolve to keep studying may have started to flag long before you finished.

Perhaps you promised yourself a reward in order to get through the study session, such as the latest episode of a show you like or your favorite takeout meal.

Research from 2019 suggests music can activate the same reward centers in your brain as other things you enjoy. Rewarding yourself with your favorite music can provide the motivation you need to learn new information.

If you prefer music that doesn’t work well for studying (more on that below), listening to your favorite songs during study breaks could motivate you to study harder.

It can increase focus

According to a 2007 study, music — classical music, specifically — can help your brain absorb and interpret new information more easily.

Your brain processes the abundance of information it receives from the world around you by separating it into smaller segments.

The researchers found evidence to suggest that music can engage your brain in such a way that it trains it to pay better attention to events and make predictions about what might happen.

How does this help you study? Well, if you struggle to make sense of new material, listening to music could make this process easier.

You can also link the ability to make better predictions about events to reasoning skills.

Improved reasoning abilities won’t help you pull answers out of thin air come exam time. But you could notice a difference in your ability to reason your way to these answers based on the information you do have.

Other research also supports music as a possible method of improving focus.

In a 2011 studyTrusted Source of 41 boys diagnosed with ADHD, background music distracted some of the boys, but it appeared to lead to better performance in the classroom for others.

It could help you memorize new information

According to a 2014 studyTrusted Source, listening to classical music seemed to help older adults perform better on memory and processing tasks.

These findings suggest certain types of music can help boost memorization abilities and other cognitive functions.

Music helps stimulate your brain, similar to the way exercise helps stimulate your body.

The more you exercise your muscles, the stronger they become, right? Giving your brain a cognitive workout could help strengthen it in a similar fashion.

How it can hurt Not everyone finds music helpful for tasks that require concentration. It can distract you An important part of music’s impact lies in its power to distract. When you feel sad or stressed, distracting yourself with your favorite tunes can help lift your spirits. But distraction probably isn’t what you’re looking for when you need to hit the books. If you’re trying to argue your position in a term paper or solve a difficult calculus equation, music that’s too loud or fast might just interrupt your thoughts and hinder your process. It can have a negative impact on working memory Working memory refers to the information you use for problem-solving, learning, and other cognitive tasks. You use working memory when trying to remember:

• items on a list
• steps for solving a math problem
• a sequence of events

Most people can work with a few pieces of information at a time. A high working memory capacity means you can handle more material. Research suggests, however, that listening to music can reduce working memory capacity. If you already have a hard time manipulating multiple pieces of information, listening to music could make this process even more challenging. It can lower reading comprehension Certain types of music — including music with lyrics and instrumental music that is fast and loud — can make it harder to understand and absorb reading material. Whether you’re looking at an evening of Victorian literature or some one-on-one time with your biology textbook, soft classical music with a slow tempo may be a better choice.

What kind of music works best? Listening to music while you study or work doesn’t always make you less productive or efficient. If you prefer to study with music, there’s no need to give it up. Keeping these tips in mind can help you find the most helpful music for work and study:

• Avoid music with lyrics. Any music that has lyrics in a language you understand will probably prove more distracting than helpful.
• Choose slow, instrumental music. Existing research generally focuses on classical music, but if you don’t enjoy this genre, you could also consider soft electronic, space, or ambient — the kind you might hear at a spa or while getting a massage.
• Avoid surprising or experimental music. Music that changes abruptly or lacks a fixed rhythm can leave you guessing about what to expect. This can distract your brain and keep you from focusing on your work.
• Keep the volume low. Study music should stay at a background volume. If it’s too loud, it could disrupt your thinking process.
• Stick to songs you don’t have strong feelings about. Listening to music you either love or hate can affect your ability to concentrate.
• Stream commercial-free music, if possible. Picture this: You’re listening to your instrumental Pandora station when a toilet paper commercial cuts in, annoying you and derailing your train of thought. Enough said.

Frequently asked questions

Is music good while studying? Some research suggests that music can help reduce stress during an academic task and that it may help with memory and processing during tasks that require thinking. However, this may depend on the type of music and the individual. What type of music is good to study with? The best type will depend on the individual. There is evidence that classical symphonies or relaxing music are a good choice for managing stress, but also that upbeat music might boost a person’s thinking processes. Instrumental music may be more suitable than songs with lyrics, as the lyrics can be distracting. When is it bad to listen to music while studying? Each person can decide if it suits them to listen to music while studying or not and which type of music is best. Types of music that may not be helpful include songs, fast and loud music, and music that provokes strong feelings in the listener.

The bottom line

Music can improve your mood and help you feel more motivated to tackle important tasks, but it doesn’t always work as a study tool. Even people who love music might find it less than helpful when trying to concentrate. Choosing music carefully can help you maximize its benefits, but if you still struggle to focus, it may help to consider white noise or other audio options instead.

Source: https://www.healthline.com/health/does-music-help-you-study#fa-qs

Early childhood is a time of wonder, exploration, and growth. The first few years of life have a tremendous and lasting impact on learning, brain development, and physical and mental health. It is estimated that during these formative years, the human brain forms one million new neural connections every second. These connections become the foundation upon which future learning is built.

All parents want a happy and healthy child. Do you remember the Mozart Effect? A phenomenon when it was published back in the 1990’s, this book and subsequent group of CDs suggested that listening to classical music improved children’s IQs. What followed was a generation of parents pressing headphones against their pregnant bellies with the hope of raising their baby’s intelligence. While the science behind the “Mozart Effect” has since been debunked, the desire for parents to give their children every possible advantage and the idea that music may help children learn and grow still applies. There is now compelling evidence that active involvement in music does have beneficial effects on many areas of child development.

Physical Development

Music is a natural way to promote physical development in young children. Dancing and exploring instruments tap into children’s inherent curiosity and love of sound and movement. In fact, a 2010 study published by the National Academy of Sciences suggests that babies find music more engaging than speech, and are born with the ability and desire to move rhythmically to music.

Music and movement are inseparable in young children. Dancing involves processing sounds and patterns and responding to rhythms in a way that requires coordination, motor planning, and flexibility. Instruments provide opportunities to practice motor control. Children quickly learn that striking a drum forcefully makes a loud sound, while isolating each finger to press piano keys can create distinct tones.

Research shows that music training enhances the development of motor skills in children. Instrumental training in early childhood enhances fine motor skills, or the ability to use small muscle movements, and also results in structural brain changes. Music and movement classes have been shown to improve complex locomotor skills, such as galloping, leaping, and skipping.

Music Therapy for Physical Development

While music is a fun and effective way to promote the development of critical motor skills for all children, music therapy can provide specific interventions to help children who are not meeting their developmental milestones. This includes children with sensory processing disorders, autism spectrum disorders, and a variety of physical and developmental challenges.

Music therapy can help:

• Improve strength and stamina
• Improve hand-eye coordination
• Promote bilateral body movements
• Reinforce directional and spatial concepts
• Improve body awareness and motor planning
• Teach strategies to modulate arousal levels

Cognitive Development

Parents know that reading to their children is important. But did you know that making music together may have even greater benefits? A large study of over 3,000 two & three year old children found that informal music making at home (think making up silly songs or exploring instrument sounds) improved attention, numeracy, and prosocial skills more than reading together did. Many studies have now documented cognitive improvements in children who receive music lessons, along with demonstrated changes to brain structures. “Children who have received music training showed differences in the thickness of the auditory areas in the right versus the left hemisphere, a sign that music training impacts brain structure. In addition, children learning to play and read music showed a stronger robustness of the white matter, a sign of stronger connectivity in the corpus callosum, an area that allows communication between the two hemispheres of the brain.”

Two areas of particular interest to researchers exploring the connections between music and cognitive development are literacy and numeracy (math skills). We now know that literacy is strongly connected to sound patterns, or phonological awareness. In fact, how well preschool-aged children can detect rhythms correlates with their future reading abilities. Engagement in music is all about sound awareness and exploration, and strengthens the same areas of the brain associated with reading and language skills. There is also a relationship between musical training and math skills. Music engagement builds spatial reasoning skills, pattern awareness, and counting skills. Active involvement in music provides opportunities to practice many important academic and pre-academic skills.

For example:

• Categorization is an important cognitive skill for young children to develop. The ability to categorize things as the same or different and to understand groupings are important milestones. Music offers many opportunities for categorization- through grouping instruments, identifying sounds as the same or different, or teaching colors through song.
• Many children’s songs include opportunities to work on counting. “5 Little Monkeys” is a great rhythmic chant that counts down from 5 to 0. “This Old Man” and “Ants go Marching” pair counting with rhyming words and give children lots of opportunities to add movements and engage in creative play.

Music Therapy and Cognitive Development

Music therapists work with children of all ages on goals related to learning and cognitive development. Long before they are enrolled in school, children are using their senses to explore and learn. Music therapists use the structure, rhythm, patterns, and sounds of music in a deliberate manner to promote success, reinforce skills, and help children reach their potential.

Music therapy can help:

• Increase attention spans
• Improve executive functioning
• Teach academic concepts
• Teach life skills
• Develop pre-academic skills such as attending, cause-effect, turn-taking, and following directions

Music at Home

What does all of this mean for your young children? Music is good for their bodies and minds, and should be a part of daily life in your family! The best news is that you don’t have to be a great musician to include music in your family’s life. Children naturally enjoy music and they want to explore it with you. Repetition is key with young children, as they will enjoy and benefit from hearing the same songs or repeating the same patterns. As children age, you can add novelty by changing the tempo, volume, or lyrics.

Singing: Singing with young children is a meaningful, bonding experience that combines focused attention, repetition, and surprise. Parents in all cultures sing to their infants to soothe and calm them. Sing songs that are associated with tasks at home like cleaning up, setting the table, and riding in the car. Allow yourself to be creative and make up your own songs, or use an existing children’s song and change the words. An easy way to start is changing to words to a familiar song, like singing “Mary had a little sock” while getting dressed. Give your child an opportunity to make choices and sing along. Encourage this by pausing at the end of a phrase and having your child fill in the missing word.

Playing: Quality learning and maximum participation happen when children experience the joy of play. Exploring sounds and motor skills using musical instruments is a fun and interactive way to learn. Having a variety of instruments around the house is great, but not necessary. Children can explore sounds on common household objects like pots and pans, containers, and safe wooden or metal objects.

Moving: Opportunities to move and dance to music at home are everywhere! Put on your favorite tunes and have a family dance party. Expose children to a variety of musical styles and sounds. You don’t have to stick to traditional children’s music, and are probably more likely to put on a music and interact with your child to a song that you love. If you are concerned about inappropriate lyrics, there are music services now that clean up popular songs to be more kid appropriate. Don’t forget to include traditional songs that you grew up with, or songs from your family’s culture.

Accessing Music Therapy Services

Music therapy takes the compelling ways that music engages and benefits children, and uses it as a tool to help meet developmental and learning goals. Music therapists work as part of the IEP (Individualized Education Program - ages 3-21), IFSP (Individual Family Services Plan ages 0-3) on the same goals as the rest of the team, but bringing with us the power of music.

For children who are receiving early intervention services, music therapy can be an important addition to their treatment plan. Music therapy is considered a related service under the Federal IDEA Law. This includes both Part B (for children ages 3-21 years) and Part C (for babies and toddlers ages 0-3). Adding music therapy services through these programs may be possible with an assessment by a board-certified music therapist and collaboration with the IEP or IFSP team.

Source:https://www.modulationstherapies.com/post/music-in-early-childhood-physical-and-cognitive-benefits#:~:text=Music%20engagement%20builds%20spatial%20reasoning,for%20young%20children%20to%20develop.

We think a lot about exercising our bodies and fret over whether or not we are doing the right kind, in the right way, and enough. But we rarely think about our brains needing exercise. After all, we use them all day long. Isn’t that sufficient? No, actually, it’s not.

Our brains need a lot of exercise! We can do that in many ways: learning new things, doing puzzles, playing cards, crossword puzzles, teaching, socializing, and listening to or making music. It’s music I’d like to talk about because it is startling the impact that music has on our brains – from improving children’s critical thinking, math, and science skills; to increasing mental alertness, memory, and reducing stress in adults; to preventing many problems experienced during the aging process. Music literally changes our brains, no matter our age.

Rhythm is Intrinsic to Life

Our relationship with sound and rhythm starts early – in the womb between 17 and 19 weeks. The growing fetus exists in a sea of vibration and sound. It hears and feels the mother’s breath, blood flow, heartbeat, and voice. And from outside the womb there is music, song, and ambient sounds that it hears. From the very beginning rhythm is encoded into our bodies and brains.

Music is essentially vibration which we feel as much as we hear. Brian Greene, Physicist at Columbia University, tells us “everything has a natural set of frequencies at which it wants to vibrate based on its construction, how it’s put together, and what it’s made of.” Our bodies and everything in the world around us consists of vibration, rhythm, and sound. Even the brain has its own internal rhythms in the form of rhythmic electrical pulses. These rhythmic beats in the brain underlie everything -- memory, thinking, walking (all of our movements large and small), emotions, and brain health.

"The brain absolutely has rhythm," says Nathan Urban, former Associate Director at Pittsburgh Brain Institute at Pittsburgh University, and every cell has its own beat. But they don’t work alone. Groups of cells synchronize in order to accomplish things such as walking, thinking, and memory. How do they synchronize to work together? Urban says it’s similar to people clapping together: they listen to their neighbor and adjust their rhythm until they are clapping together. These rhythmic patterns are essential for movement. There is a walking rhythm, a running rhythm, etc. Locomotion has to have a rhythmic underpinning and science has shown that music can re-establish the brain’s rhythmic sequences when they get out of sync. When we sing, march in time with music, play an instrument, or dance, our cells get back in sync and begin firing together to re-establish the rhythm patterns needed for our daily functions.

Music for Children, Adults, and Seniors

Whether we are listening to music, playing an instrument, or simply drumming or tapping in time with it, we are doing great things for our brain – young or old. For children, the benefits of musical training are remarkable. Children who study music are usually better at math, science and engineering later in life. The younger they start, the better it is. Their brains develop differently from those who do not study music as a child. Most notably, musicians have a larger corpus callosum, the large bundle of nerve fibers that connect the two sides of the brain. Also, areas involving movement, hearing, and visuospatial abilities (perception of spatial relationships among objects) appear to be larger in professional keyboard players. And musicians in general can more easily process multiple things at once because playing music requires them to use multiple senses at the same time.

At any age, however, if we incorporate music into our life our brains are strengthened, they remain resilient, and they function well. Making music by playing an instrument, singing, or drumming increases blood flow to the brain, stimulates production of new brain cells, and in certain areas the gray matter increases, thus changing the brain’s anatomy. As with anything else, if we don’t exercise our brains there will be decline, decay, and a slowing down as age sets in. But brains are amazingly adaptable and flexible well into old age, always creating new pathways and new neural networks to boost our thinking, our mood, our ability to move, and our creativity – if they are stimulated! When brain networks are used, challenged, and tested frequently they will remain strong, connected, and function well. 


What Happens in the Brain with Music?

Listening to music requires almost every part of the brain to work simultaneously and do multiple things at lightening speed in a coordinated manner. Finnish researchers at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, researched how the brain is affected by music and found that most areas of the brain are activated all at the same time, including areas that control movement, emotions, and creativity. And there is a strong link between the auditory regions of the brain and the motor areas that process the pulse of music – supporting the premise that music and movement are interconnected. For example, the cerebellum, at the base of the brain, controls movement and timing and is immediately engaged when we hear music, in order to get into sync with the beat. The Finnish researchers found that the limbic areas of the brain, associated with emotions, were involved in processing rhythm as well as tonality (the character of a piece of music). Interestingly, they found that the processing of timbre (the quality of a sound) was associated with the area of the brain related to “mind-wandering and creativity.” Professor Petri Toiviainen of the study summed it up by saying, “Our results show for the first time how different musical features activate emotional, motor, and creative areas of the brain.”

In short, there is no single music center in the brain. Rather, musical activity involves almost all regions of the brain. There are areas that process different aspects of music (timbre, pitch, tone, etc.) and other areas that coordinate to instantly bring all of this information together, flooding our senses with music.

Music for Brain Health

Music is a full-blown brain workout every time, especially when we are actively involved through singing, dancing, or making music. Active participation in music requires all of the brain regions and neural networks to work together, simultaneously and rapidly. Music changes the biology of the brain, creating new networks and strengthening others. Lawrence Parsons, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, formerly in the Department of Psychology at University of Sheffield says “There is no activity that we do that allows the brain to do so many things at once with such complicated coordination and with such depth. We are wired for sound.”

No matter our age, the brain has amazing plasticity, with an ability to restructure, reorganize, re-create, and heal itself. That the brain can change itself at any age is a fairly new recognition in neuroscience. The brain’s ability to heal and restructure itself is far greater than we ever thought. And now that we know the power of music in healing the brain, it is rapidly becoming a method of choice for brain health. So listen to music, sing, dance, drum, or take a few music lessons. It is never too late to build your brain!

• Increase your resilience to age-related decline in brain functions
• Develop faster reflexes through exercising all of your senses simultaneously
• Strengthen your learning skills through the brain’s inherent ability to manage complex information
• Improve your attention span, concentration, and problem-solving abilities
• Experience a greater enjoyment of life

Source: https://www.highpointaz.com/christinas-blog/music-rhythm-and-the-brain

As children explore music through play, they make discoveries about themselves and the world around them, develop a larger vocabulary and important pre-reading and math skills, and strengthen their social and emotional skills. Exposure to music from a young age also helps children's ability to play and appreciate music.

From enhancing hand-eye coordination, to practicing fine and gross motor skills and much more, see below for five reasons why music is important for early childhood development according to Carnegie Hall.

Develops Fine & Gross Motor Control

Making music, especially through tapping or clapping and movement, can help enhance fine and gross motor skills! Simple songs combined with play can help boost brain and body coordination. All of these activities help build important connections in the brain during this essential time of development.

Music Builds Intimacy

Close relationships have a significant impact on children’s development and music can support these intimate relationships. For example, singing lullabies to babies is a great way to bond. Studies have found that babies will listen calmly to a lullaby for twice as long as baby talk or adult speech! When caregivers sing lullabies, changing their pitch, tone and lyrics to soothe and relax the baby, they will also feel a sense of security and care.

Expands Communication & Imagination

Babbling and sound-play helps babies develop the neural pathways needed to listen and speak. Did you know infants who hear language directed to them tend to babble more and gain larger vocabularies by toddlerhood? Children can easily and quickly mimic music and sounds they hear as a way to understand and make sense of the world around them.

Creates a Sense of Belonging

Music has the ability to foster community and belonging. In their homes, children feel connected to their families and communities as they hear accents, songs and stories. In the US, one in four children has at least one immigrant parent. Because of this, preschool tends to unify home and education together. During preschool, young children must learn about and experience the concepts of ‘belonging’ and ‘being an outsider’. When teachers incorporate the music and sounds of several cultures, the children can experience an inclusive and connected world early on.

It Makes them Happy!

Live music is exciting for us adults, but it’s even more exciting for little ones! Live music is known for creating happiness and excitement in those experiencing it. Music can even protect us from illness, according to Carnegie Hall. Cooking familiar foods, celebrating holidays, and performing beloved music and dances are ways for children to discover the possibilities of laughing and joking, and to experience positive emotions like delight, joy, and affection.

It’s obvious music has numerous positive impacts on not only our daily life, but also on early childhood development! From lullabies, sing-a-longs, nursey rhymes and more, music can help build an intimate connection with your child, enhance their small and large motor skills and impact their overall happiness. Just like language, music is a shared, expressive, inventive, portable way to be together. If put to work, it can be a powerful force in the lives of young children and families.

Source: https://www.portdiscovery.org/news-room/5-reasons-why-music-important-early-childhood-development