“Music is ubiquitous in our lives” (Turn off the music! Music impairs visual association memory performance in older adults, 2015, The Gerontologist). It’s present while we are driving, studying, working, shopping, and dining. I often feel that when I’m out and about, I am barraged by music and background TV. Further adding to my frustration is the fact that others are choosing what I have to hear as well as how loud it is.

What is the impact of this noise on cognition and memory? Does it facilitate conversations at diner? Does background music help concentration? Does it help or impair memory? Does it release stress? There is evidence that background music enhances performance on simple tasks like naming as many animals as you can in one minute – called fluency. Then there is the controversial “Mozart Effect.” In the original study listening to Mozart’s sonata for two pianos improved spatial reasoning in college students. It didn’t take long to extrapolate this finding to inferring that listening to Mozart, maybe all classical music, increased intelligence. Later research was unable to confirm this effect.

The study of interest to us assessed the effect of background music on associative memory. The task required learning to associate names with faces and later recognition of which name went with which face. Subjects were younger (aged 18-30) versus older (aged 60-75) healthy adults who had no signs of memory disorder. Each participant was also screened and found not to have significant hearing impairment.

There were three conditions for this study. One group had silence while learning and recalling the task, a control condition. A second heard “musical rain,” computer generated sounds that were not structured like music, anther control. The experimental group heard instrumental background music that was unfamiliar to them as lyrics would be clearly distracting.

The findings were clear. The younger participants were better at this memory task than the older subjects. More relevant to the question addressed, background music as well as “musical rain” similarly impaired memory in the older participants. Interestingly, all participants found the music distracting and preferred silence during learning and remembering. In short, background music as well as “musical rain” was distracting to all and detrimental to the old.

Of course, using familiar music may have produced different results as unfamiliar music draws attention and therefore would likely be more distracting – a question for future research. This becomes more of a problem as we age in that we have a more difficult time multitasking. This limits our ability to ignore irrelevant background when we are engaged in complex cognitive operations.

The implication seems clear to me. Turn off the background music and noise if you need to think or learn – especially if you are past middle age or have any sign of cognitive decline or hearing loss.