Some people can work in a busy coffee shop, with music playing and dozens of people bustling about and all sorts of smells wafting through the air, and still be productive.
While other people get completely derailed when their neighbor plays music above a whisper. Why? That’s what we are going to discuss in today’s article.
Getting things done
by David Allen
⏱ 12 minutes reading time
🎧 Audio version available
Mainly, the difference has to do with sensory gating, which is your brain’s ability to filter out unnecessary sensory input competing for your attention. If your brain lets in and processes a lot of unwanted input, you probably have what neuroscientists call, leaky, or impaired, sensory gating.
And if it doesn’t, you probably have selective sensory gating. But the good news is, no matter which type you have, both can be used to boost your creativity, in different ways.
Sensory gating can involve various senses from sight to smell to hearing. It’s kind of like a bouncer outside a nightclub. Some bouncers have a strict door policy: “You should change your shirt, Mister.” And some let basically anyone in: “come on in. looking good.” Scientists are still trying to figure out exactly which part of the brain controls this, and they do have some leads.
Like, when it comes to filtering sounds, a 2019 study found that it starts at the ventral cochlear nucleus or VCN. That’s where the auditory nerve fibers that encode information about sound connect to the brain stem.
It means that auditory sensory gating begins almost as soon as someone hears something. So, ultimately, whether someone can filter out noise while they work might simply boil down to how their brain is wired. Still, one thing we do know is that sensory gating is not only about filtering out stimuli. It can also influence the ability to come up with innovative and original ideas.
One study that looked into this was published in 2015. It measured 97 tests of subjects’ auditory sensory gating ability and looked at how that correlated with their creativity. First, the participant took a test that measured creative thinking.
It asked them to finish incomplete figures, to take pictures, and also to imagine what might happen in improbable scenarios, like, if they could fly. Then subjects were asked to give a number ranking to their achievement and recognition level in various creative fields, including music, dance, scientific discovery, and virtual arts.
Finally, the participants sat in a soundproof booth while wearing headphones, and researchers played two, one millisecond-long clicks 500 milliseconds apart. And while participants listened, their brain activity was measured using an electroencephalogram, or EEG.
In the people with leaky gating heads, the same level of a neurological response happened to both clicks. Meanwhile, people with selective gating registered the first click but paid much less attention to the second. Essentially, the brain filtered it out. But here is the fascinating thing:
The study also found that people with leaky sensory gating had more actual, real-world creative achievements. As in, their creative work was more likely to be widely distributed or recognized. The author suggests that might be because leaky sensory gaters focus on more stimuli than other people, so they are able to make more creative connections between seemingly unrelated things.
For instance, a writer with leaky gating might be inspired by a random conversation overheard in a restaurant. Or a dancer might be inspired by, say, the movement of rain on a window. That said, if you don’t have leaky sensory gating, that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative!
The same study found that people with selective gating were more likely to exhibit divergent thinking, which is another form of thinking. Keep in mind that divergent thinkers are able to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. If you can shut out distractions and really focus on your task, you can come up with innovative solutions more easily. So, there are definitely benefits and trade-offs to each type. Evidence shows that you can go from selective to leaky sensory gating in some situations, but it is not a skill you can actively practice.
We must take a more individualized approach to music and studying, as it appears that three factors are key in determining whether music is beneficial while studying: personality type, the type of work, and the type of music.
Differences in attention and working memory capacity affect the degree to which music can influence performance. Researchers concluded that the higher an individual’s working memory capacity, the less likely they were to be affected by music, at least for reading comprehension.
Researchers also found that music had a detrimental effect on the performance of introverts, but less so far for extroverts. Extroverts are understimulated and desire more stimulation, whereas introverts are already overstimulated and therefore avoid situations that further increase stimulation.
Research gave substantial evidence that music while studying is not optimal; they believe those who choose to listen while working may have a deficiency in metacognition. Those who preferred to listen to music while they studied did markedly worse on a reading comprehension assessment.
There has been substantial evidence that the type of work is a key factor in determining whether or not music is appropriate. Most studies have demonstrated that music has detrimental effects. Only one study reported that the study was not unaffected by music.
One study done in 2013 at The University of Maryland tested 32 students on several different math tests in different music conditions. They had silent music, high-intensity music, and low-intensity music. And what they found is that the students scored best with the silent music, and the low-intensity music beat out the high-intensity music for second place.
And by low and high, we mean classical piano music versus death metal. So, they went from one extreme to another extreme. Still, that is irrelevant to the fact that silence beat out both music types in that study.
However, another study in France, done with 249 participants, found the students who watched a lecture while listening to classical music scored better on a subsequent test than the students who watched the same lectures while listening to nothing.
So, the answers differ. And to our knowledge, there has not yet been a truly large-scale study of music’s effect on the brain. But with the results we have right now, we think we can still come to some conclusions. It seems clear that high-intensity music, or music with lyrics, are not good choices when you are reading or doing something with language or when you are trying to learn something new. And secondly, music is a give and take thing when it comes to your brain.
Hope you’ve understood the topic. Do you like to listen music while performing your routine tasks? Please tell us in the comments section.
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