Listening to music can improve focus and attention, while responses are highly individualized.“Locking in,” another term for staying focused, is a challenge many people face. It is easy to become distracted, procrastinate and feel unmotivated when completing tasks. To overcome these obstacles, a strategy people can use to lock in is listening to music, which has been shown to increase motivation and encourage individuals to focus.
Whether one is completing an assignment for class or a task for work, exercising, performing a household chore, or playing a game, music has been shown to aid in productivity and improve focus. University of Alabama at Birmingham experts Christopher Ballmann, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Human Studies, and Kristina Visscher, Ph.D., professor in the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine Department of Neurobiology, share their professional insight on music’s influence on focus and concentration.
Neurological effects of music
Ballmann, director of UAB Resistance Exercise Physiology Lab, notes that music has been shown to alter activation of various parts of the nervous system involved in attention, concentration and cognitive performance. The beneficial effects of music on attention and concentration depend on such factors as music genre, personal preference and the complexity of the task being performed by the person.
“Any sensation that you hear, see, smell, taste or touch is going to have an impact on the brain,” said Visscher, co-director of the Civitan International Neuroimaging Laboratory. “Music, of course, is going to activate the pathways that have to do with auditory sensation and also evokes some sense of emotion.”
The capabilities to maintain attention over time and shift attention to the wanted task are enormously variable across people. They are variable in different people and can be variable in the same person as well.
“There is a huge amount of individual variability. It is something very clear in the literature,” Visscher said.
Music’s effect on focus
According to Ballmann, fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, listening to music has been shown to improve focus and attention, with some evidence showing music can improve vigilance, especially during repetitive tasks. Music may increase motivation and enhance enjoyment, leading to improvement in effort and task engagement.
Music genres with predictable rhythms and beats, like electronic dance music and pop, may be more conducive to enhancing focus and concentration due to less diversion of attentional resources toward processing of the auditory stimulus. Meanwhile, the complexity and context of the task being performed are important factors to consider.
According to Visscher, any auditory stimulation can change neural oscillations, the rhythmic electrical activity commonly known as brain waves. These oscillations, such as alpha, beta and gamma, vary from person to person and correspond to different attention states. Music may modulate existing brain oscillations to help with focus and relaxation by synchronizing neural activity in the brain.
For instance, background music with strong oscillating components can change brain frequencies and impact attention capabilities, with research showing that these rhythmic oscillations in music improve focus in individuals with ADHD-like symptoms.
“There are people who benefit from having a little bit of external stimulation during the time they are trying to study or concentrate,” Visscher said.
However, as some people find listening to music useful, some find it distracting and hindering to task performance. It is not fully understood why, but some evidence suggests different personality types or nervous system physiology dictate responses to music during tasks.
“Music can be distracting, especially if the music contains lyrics, is played at a high volume, is disliked or unfamiliar to the individual, or is complex or unpredictable,” Ballmann said. “As task complexity increases, music may divert necessary attentional resources, thereby leading to worsened performance.”
Music genres containing complex or high amounts of lyrical content may be less effective at promoting focus and concentration, especially during tasks that rely on language resources, such as writing and reading. Distracting music may also worsen performance for tasks requiring intense focus like studying.
However, some evidence supports that lyrical and distracting music may enhance exercise performance by diverting attentional resources away from the focus of the discomfort of the exercise.
Ballmann recommends that every individual test their music preferences or experiment according to their own responses to optimize focus and attention.
How music tempo influences focus
Research suggests that the tempo of music affects arousal/alertness, cognitive processing speed, and attentional resource allocation. Depending on the individual, this can either enhance or impair task performance.
Ballmann says listening to instrumental or familiar music played at a low to moderate volume with a consistent beat is optimal for focus and attention.
“Slower-tempo music less than 60 bpm tends to promote more relaxing and calm feelings, while faster tempos over 100 bpm promote stimulation and arousal,” Ballmann said.
Music that is too slow may lower alertness, decreasing task performance; but music that is too fast may overload attentional resources. Ballmann recommends that individuals start with moderate-tempo music between 60 and 100 bpm, and from there increase or decrease tempo based on individual taste and response.
The role of music in mental fatigue
In addition to focus and concentration, music influences mental fatigue. Also known as mental exhaustion, this is when the brain is exhausted due to high cognitive stress and depletion of dopamine, often feeling as though the brain is drained.
According to Ballmann, listening to enjoyable music may lower perceptions of mental workload and fatigue through improving mood and reducing task-related stress. Over time, this may ultimately support attention performance.
In some cases, music with a relatively fast modulation can improve sustained attention, Visscher says.
Music that diverts attentional resources could lead to worsened mental fatigue over time, especially during complex tasks. Music’s influence on mental fatigue is dependent on the individual and characteristics of the music.
A misconception is that responses to music are simple, predictable and universal, and can apply to all scenarios. Music is complex and diverse, with many variants of genres, tempos, instruments, rhythms, preferences and more. The implementation of music interventions is highly contextual and goal-dependent.
“While the underlying reasons for the differences in responses to music may not be fully understood, we should still appreciate that these differences exist and treat music in a manner centered toward individualized application,” Ballmann said.