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. Read More
