[Health&Healing] A Little Music w/ Exercise Boost Brain Power- Study Suggests

[Guest guest]

Comments?

Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

A Little Music With Exercise Boosts Brain Power, Study Suggests

 

COLUMBUS, Ohio - It's no secret that exercise improves mood, but new

research suggests that working out to music may give exercisers a

cognitive boost. Listening to music while exercising helped to

increase scores on a verbal fluency test among cardiac

rehabilitation patients.

 

This is the first study to look at the combined effects of music and

short-term exercise on mental performance, " said Charles Emery, the

study's lead author and a professor of psychology at Ohio State

University.

 

" Evidence suggests that exercise improves the cognitive performance

of people with coronary artery disease, " Emery said. " And listening

to music is thought to enhance brain power. We wanted to put the two

results together. "

 

Those results appear in a recent issue of the journal Heart & Lung.

 

The study included 33 men and women in the final weeks of a cardiac

rehabilitation program. Most participants had undergone bypass

surgery, angioplasty or cardiac catheterization.

 

Coronary artery disease may compromise cognitive ability, Emery

said; that's why he and his colleagues chose cardiac rehabilitation

patients for this study.

 

The researchers asked participants to complete a verbal fluency test

before and after two separate sessions of exercising on a treadmill.

The workouts were scheduled a week apart and lasted about 30

minutes. Participants listened to classical music - Vivaldi's " The

Four Seasons " - during one of the sessions.

 

" We used 'The Four Seasons' because of its moderate tempo and

positive effects on medical patients in previous research, " Emery

said. " But given the range of music preferences among patients, it's

especially important to evaluate the influence of other types of

music on cognitive outcomes. "

 

As a way to measure anxiety and depression, participants completed a

30-item checklist before and after exercise. The list included

adjectives to describe the patient's current mood. The researchers

also tested each person's verbal fluency before and after each

exercise session by asking participants to generate lists of words

in specific categories.

 

" This kind of task challenges the part of the brain that handles

planning and abstract thought as well as a person's capacity for

organized verbal processing, " Emery said.

 

Participants reported feeling better emotionally and mentally after

working out regardless of whether or not they listened to music. But

the improvement in verbal fluency test performance after listening

to music was more than double that of the non-music condition.

 

" Exercise seems to cause positive changes in the nervous system, and

these changes may have a direct effect on cognitive ability, " Emery

said. " Listening to music may influence cognitive function through

different pathways in the brain. The combination of music and

exercise may stimulate and increase cognitive arousal while helping

to organize cognitive output. "

 

Emery conducted the study with Evana Hsiao and Scott Hill, both with

Ohio State, and David Frid of Pfizer, Inc.

 

A grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute helped

fund this research.