MUSIC, MAESTRO! BY NISWANA SHREE RISAL
Music – it’s the soundtrack of our lives. Chords, melodies and notes are scientifically proven to help us through hardships and acquire motivation, and in some cases, enhance studying habits and the immune system. For Min Park, a third-year international student from South Korea, it’s something to cope with a hectic schedule. The biology major spends her mornings writing lab reports, afternoons in lecture halls and evenings in the library. Her headphones, however, are always in her ears, “listening to one song on repeat.” In contrast, Park’s preferences are varied: Japanese anime openers (“Even though I don’t watch anime”), Korean pop music, original soundtracks, Western pop and “country, but only Taylor Swift country.” She also likes jellyfish white noise, 12hour Studio Ghibli playlists and piano coupled with rain sounds. She also says the background noise depends on her mood and even what she’s studying that day. “Last semester, I had physics and I had chemistry,” says Park, “chemistry — I did not have songs with lyrics on. It was always white music or the rain because I have to memorize stuff. Physics, for some reason, I always have the lyrics stuff on.” “I turned on what I was interested in, like lyrics and stuff, and I could study for some reason. So I sort of have that habit now.” No matter the method, Park noticed a difference in her ability to focus. “The reason why I listened to lyrical stuff while studying physics is because I experienced my concentration get better,” says Park. “I think it’s more of a trial-and-error. I was studying with both depending on my mood, because then, you know, I could get into the zone.” This is because of how memories are paired with sensory stimulation — a psychological process wherein one or more of the senses including hearing, smell, taste, touch and vision are activated. It’s the reason why we can recall the winter holiday season when we hear a Christmas song in the summer, according to researcher Chenlu Gao. Gao, a research fellow in sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School, co-authored the 2020 case study “Classical music, educational learning, and slow-wave sleep: A targeted memory
reactivation experiment” with Paul Fillmore and Michael K. Scullin — all of which are scholars in cognitive science at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
MUSIC AND MEMORY Published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, their work examines the intersection between three variables: music, slow-wave (deep) sleep and studying. They further investigated an already established technique called targeted memory reactivation (TMR) where sensory or verbal cues — in this case, music — are paired with learning material to enhance long-term memory. “A lot of college students listen to music when they study,” says Gao, “so he [Scullin] thought that’s a great opportunity because those students are already pairing those sensory stimuli, the music, with their memories of textbook knowledge. So, if they’re already doing part one of the targeted memory reactivation, can we maybe just do part two and help them remember that knowledge better?” Fifty undergraduate students at Baylor (between the ages of 18 and 33) completed a college-level mathematics-based macroeconomics lecture whilst classical music played in the background. “Those songs don’t have lyrics, and we know lyrics may interfere with learning,” says Gao, “the specific songs we chose had very distinctive melodies, so we thought they were great for targeted memory reactivation.” The symphonies of Beethoven, Chopin or Vivaldi replayed to only half of the participants as they slept in the laboratory. The next day, everyone took a macroeconomics exam. After over a year of experimenting, Fillmore, Gao and Scullin found those who listened to classical music during slow-wave sleep scored 18% higher than those who didn’t. “It may show us that it’s possible to use this targeted memory reactivation technique to help college students learn better,” says Gao, “and even, like, really tough STEM materials better.”
MUSIC AND THE BRAIN Kiminobu Sugaya, head of neuroscience at the University of Central Florida, has been in the field for over four decades. Alongside violinist Ayako Yonetani, he teaches one of the most
