Music before bedtime can disrupt sleep
People who listen to music before bed are often haunted by the humming of a catchy tune in their sleep. Surprisingly, the phenomenon seems to be particularly pronounced with instrumental music.
Many people enjoy listening to calming music before going to bed. However, this may not only have advantages, as researchers led by Michael K. Scullin of Baylor University report in the journal, «Psychological Science». In some cases, the melodies seem to disrupt sleep – even if the listeners subjectively feel more relaxed. This seems especially prevalent with instrumental music.
For their study, the scientists interviewed almost 200 people about their sleep quality. They also wanted to know how often and at what times of the day the participants listened to music. They discovered that those who listened to a lot of music before bed reported poorer sleep and were more often tired during the day than subjects who weren’t die-hard music fans. They also complained more frequently about «ear worms» – catchy tunes that they could no longer get out of their heads. Regularly, they woke up at night with the melodies humming in their minds. This was noticed particularly often when participants listened to instrumental music.
To test the results from the survey, Scullin and his colleagues asked 50 young adults to spend a night in the sleep lab. The participants were first allowed to listen to three different songs. Afterwards, they were supposed to sleep. For the audio sample, the researchers had especially selected three songs that have been proven to be catchy tunes: «Don’t stop believin’» by Journey, «Call me maybe» by Carly Rae Jepsen and Taylor Swifts «Shake it off». Half of the participants listened to the songs with vocals, the other half listened to the instrumental version.
Here, too, the evaluation showed that around a quarter of the subjects woke up at night with the catchy tune stuck in their head. In addition, the participants slept less deeply, and in the EEG the researchers observed increased brain wave patterns associated with memory consolidation. This was true even when the subjects felt more relaxed after listening to the music than before.
As in the survey, the effect was particularly evident in the sleep lab after listening to instrumental music. The researchers don’t have an explanation for this. It’s quite possible that the participants automatically added the lyrics to the popular songs in their heads – and therefore it got stuck more easily. However, this doesn’t explain why instrumental music, which has no lyrics at all, seems to increasingly disrupt sleep.
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