Everyone has a different way of learning. There are people who need a calm atmosphere while learning, but some are listening to music while learning because they feel more able to concentrate.
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Learning is an activity that triggers stress
Learning activities are often associated with stress.
Without realizing it, the body will respond to stress by producing various stress hormones, such as adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine.
This increase in stress hormones in the body makes the heart rate increase so you feel excited, breathing also becomes faster and shorter, the muscles of the body tighten, blood pressure rises, easily anxious, making it difficult to think clearly.
Are you familiar with this "side effect" of learning?
Especially if it is done with the SKS system aka the overnight speeding system.
Now, listening to music can help relieve stress arising from learning so that you can focus more on understanding the content of the text that must be learned or memorized.
Listen to music while learning to improve memory
The music we hear begins with the vibration of sound waves entering the eardrum and is passed to the inner ear. In the inner ear, sound waves are captured by hair cells contained in the cochlea to be converted into electrical signals. Only then is the voice signal sent by the ear nerve fibers to the brain to be processed into electrical signals and translated into the sound you hear.
Don't stop there. At the same time, electrical signals then spread to various parts of the brain. First, this electrical signal comes to the part of the temporal brain that functions to process data to understand language (so you understand the meaning of the song's lyrics) and regulate emotions.
This electrical signal also flows to the hypothalamus of the brain, a place where hormones are produced when regulating blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature.
When responding to these electrical signals, the hypothalamus immediately works to increase the happy atmosphere of dopamine while reducing the hormone cortisol. That is why all kinds of stress symptoms that come with you during learning can gradually subside as long as you listen to music. A study even mentions that dopamine release can trigger the brain to activate reward receptors in the brain which can increase your motivation to learn.
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the brain's nerves become more active when you listen to music. Because electrical signals can simultaneously stimulate the relationship between the two sides of the brain (left and right) and activate the brain area associated with emotional, cognitive, and memory processes. In short, listening to music while learning can improve mood and is associated with an increase in the ability of cognitive functions of the brain, especially memory.
A study showed that participants who were asked to learn while listening to music showed superior academic achievement than groups of students who were asked to study in a noisy room. Although both conditions are equally noisy, learning while listening to music is proven to make the brain focus more on one task while blocking sounds from around that have nothing to do with you or your work.
What type of music is suitable for listening when studying?
Mozart-style classical music is considered the most powerful music genre to increase brain intelligence. The fact isn't always that, you know! There is no research that really proves it for sure. This theory has proven to be limited to music that is more stable with a volume that is not too hard, regardless of genre.
But according to Chris Brewer, author of Soundtracks for Learning, the benefits of listening to music will be more effective if the music genre is adapted to the activities carried out. Take for example, music that contains positive lyrics is suitable to motivate learning and trigger enthusiasm when the body is tired. While the tempo of slow music is more suitable to focus the mind to stay focused because it provides a more calming effect.