Music: a smart move

There’s little argument that exercise is good for your body, but researchers have found that exercising to music may make you smarter too.

An Ohio State University study found that verbal skills improved significantly in cardiac rehabilitation patients who exercised on a treadmill while listening to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” “There have been a number of studies that have looked at the effects of just exercise or music on cognitive function,” said Charles F. Emery, lead author of the study published in the journal Heart & Lung. “But our goal was to look at an interactive effect of both, that the combination might be that much better than one or the other alone.”

Emery, associate professor of psychology and medicine at Ohio State, studied 33 men and women, ages 38 to 76, who were finishing a cardiac rehabilitation program. This group was chosen, Emery says, because previous research has shown that cardiac patients may be prone to cognitive impairments. The subjects exercised on a treadmill for 20 minutes with no music, then again while listening to “Four Seasons,” selected for its upbeat tempo. After each session, they were given a verbal fluency test and asked to write a list of words starting with a specific letter. After exercising with no music, there was no change; with music there was “statistically a huge effect,” Emery says, with subjects able to produce more words. “One question would be to see if you can extend the effects over a longer period of time with a longer intervention of music,” he adds.

Although exercise stimulates neurotransmitters in the brain, music serves to “organize cognitive output,” Emery says. “Obviously a lot of people listen to music while exercising, but this does give scientific support for the potential benefits of doing this.”