According to research published in the journal Psychological Science, if you listen to music before going to sleep, your brain continues processing the tune while you sleep. Around one-quarter of people who listened to well-known songs before going to bed awoke during the night with the tune “stuck” in their head, according to a sleep lab research. Earworms are musical or lyrical phrases that spontaneously repeat in the mind, an occurrence known as an earworm. It was linked to poorer sleep quality.
Someone who has been listening to music with a fast tempo and distinctive melodic contours is more likely to get an earworm, a type of involuntary musical imagery, according to the researchers. The music industry is dominated by these types of exuberant songs that are intended to be memorable, and the majority of younger listeners are more inclined to listen to music than ever before. Given that many people listen to music in order to fall asleep, the researchers wanted to see if listening to music before bedtime would cause earworms and whether these earworms would have an impact on one’s sleep quality.
“I had never considered earworms until I taught a Cognition course and learned that there is a subfield devoted to determining why we hear songs in our heads,” says study author Michael K. Scullin, an associate professor at Baylor University and the Sleep Neuroscience and Cognition Lab’s principal investigator.
“I’m a sleep scientist, and I was intrigued whether having an earworm at night might affect sleep. Some of us thought it would have a negative impact on sleep because earworms can sometimes be unpleasant. Others in the lab believed it would assist sleeping since the earworm might distract you from rumination. It was enjoyable to research these opposing viewpoints in a series of studies.”
Around 33 percent of people in an initial, cross-sectional survey in the United States reported experiencing earworms at bedtime — either when attempting to fall asleep, while waking up in the middle of the night, or upon waking in the early morning. Participants who listened to music more frequently were more likely to have these sleep-related earworms. Sleep quality and quantity were not significantly impacted by the number of daily songs, but there was a negative link between listening to music and sleep. Furthermore, greater music listening was linked to worse sleep, which was linked to higher frequency of sleep-related earworms; this relationship was mediated by the amount of sleepless nights. Participants with sleep-related earworms had an average Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score of 54%.
Scullin and his crew then conducted a sleep lab study on a group of 48 young people. The polysomnography test, which recorded subjects’ brain waves, blood oxygen levels, breathing patterns, heart rate, and eye and body movements all night long, was part of the experiment. Participants were asked to select three songs from their phone’s library, and all of them were given the same version. Importantly, half an hour before going to sleep, everyone was assigned at random to listen to either instrumental or lyrical versions of three well-known pop tunes.
The participants were then asked if they still had a “sound, song, or melody” in their heads at around ten minutes after waking. They were also asked whether they had ever tried to fall asleep while a song was stuck in their heads, when waking up in the night, or upon waking up in the morning.
According to polysomnography findings, participants who heard the instrumental music had significantly worse sleep compared to those who listened to the lyrical music, with poorer sleep efficiency and more difficulty falling asleep. People who suffered from sleep-related earworms had worse sleep, according to a recent study. They also had more difficulty falling asleep, struggled to fall asleep, woke up in the middle of the night frequently, and awoke feeling tired. This was especially true for earworms that occurred just before falling asleep, as opposed to those experienced shortly after getting up. The same effect was not observed following a night of sleep deprivation.
Unlike the previous research, around a fifth of participants reported waking from sleep with an earworm, which the authors noted is noteworthy since participants had not listened to music for 8 hours and there was nothing in the setting to stimulate involuntary musical imagery.
“There have been several studies conducted on earworms, and we just completed two of them. The first was a survey-based study, and the second was a sleep laboratory experiment in which people were exposed to earworms. Our findings consistently indicated that the more you listen to music, especially at night when it’s difficult to sleep because you’re listening to it, the more likely you are to acquire an earworm, which leads to increased difficulty sleeping.” Scullin stated.
In a final research, the researchers looked at the EEG data from the sleep lab study and discovered increased frontal slow oscillations in individuals with sleep-related earworms. These frontal slow oscillations have also been observed in memory consolidation studies, implying that earworms are caused by the brain replicating songs while people are sleeping to assist transfer information from cortico-cortical networks into long-term memory.
“We discovered that one-quarter of people have an earworm in the middle of the night or as soon as they open their eyes in the morning,” Scullin added. Why should someone have a song stuck in their head if they haven’t listened to music or been exposed to other environmental signals for many hours?”
“We believe this is a memory consolidation mechanism — the musical tune is reactivated at night,” says Dr. Baser. “Interestingly, individuals who reported earworms had the same brain activity signature of sleep memory consolidation (frontal slow oscillation activity) as those who experienced better sleep quality. Still, we don’t know why memory consolidation of a song would result in worse sleep quality.
The findings show that musical processing continues while sleeping, and that listening to favorite music before bedtime may not be beneficial to good sleep.
“There are a slew of methods to enhance sleep,” Scullin concluded. “However, it’s critical to remember that getting excellent sleep depends on prioritizing sleep. Setting an earlier bedtime and consistently adhering to it is one of the most essential things a person can do to feel well rested and perform at their best during the day. We’re also working on a website that will help people improve their sleeping habits: SleepIsGood.com”
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