Does music help you focus? -Natalie Earl

             I have always listened to music as a stress reliever so that when I do homework or study for school it would not be as boring. I recently was wondering if listening to music while doing homework or studying would help me in more ways than I thought. Listening to music while performing other important tasks is not for everyone because people can easily be distracted. I read about an experiment conducted by researchers from the Wake Forest School of Medicine and the University of North Carolina Greensboro. These researchers chose 21 young adults and put them in an MRI scanner as they played a variety of music; they played classical, country, rap/hip-hop, and rock. The researchers also collected favorite songs by the 21 young adults, once the music played their brains were scanned using an MRI. The researchers wanted to see how each person's feelings about a song would influence their brain activity. I learned about the part of the brain that is called the default mode network which is apparently is connected to how humans switch between what's going on around them and their self-referential thoughts. The results of the experiment was that most of the people were better connected to the default mode network part of the brain when they listened to their favorite song or their preferred genre of music.
            That experiment results showed that listening to songs that a person favors will most likely help them focus more than listening to songs that they dislike.  Although that experiment said that music would help overall there are other experiments that have proven that theory to be wrong. Dr. Nick Perham's 2010 study, "Can preference for background music mediate the irrelevant sound effect," explored how music can interfere with short-term memory potential. Dr. Nick Perham also included, "We found that listening to liked or disliked music was exactly the same, and both were worse than the quiet control condition. Both impaired performance on serial-recall tasks." Dr. Nick Perham is saying that music would not help in the case where somebody needed to memorize something in order. A Stanford University Professor, Clifford Nass had similar thoughts to Perham, Nass said, "Music with lyrics is very likely to have a problematic effect when you're writing or reading. Probably less of an effect on math, if you're not using the language parts of your brain. In my day, there was no way you could take music in the library. When (today's students) go to the library to study, they bring their noise, and music, with them." Professor Nass does make a point that when writing or reading the music with lyrics would jumble the words confusing you but does that mean music without lyrics is the best option for reading and writing sections? Nass said that for math music with lyrics would have less of an effect on confusing you because math is mostly studying how to do equations.
           Each experiment will say something different but I think that listening to music while studying and doing homework will be a decision for everyone to make for themselves. I personally think it allows myself to focus, but I have realized that I listen to a playlist of all the songs I prefer rather than listening to a radio station with songs I might not know also I do not listen to music while reading. I do know some people that get easily distracted when listening to music while doing work but I also know some people like myself that can listen to music and be completely focused. Every person has a different opinion on listening to music while working, listening to music will effect everyone in a different way. I do encourage everyone to give listening to music a try while doing homework and/or studying at least once if you have not done so before because it could help you concentrate more.