Scientists reveal everyday pleasures that elevate brain performance

A group of researchers looked at a new NYU Tandon School of Engineering study involving MindWatch a brain-monitoring technology - here’s what they found

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Have you got a favourite track? Well, it’s time to turn it up and enjoy the beat with a warm cup of coffee.

Everyday pleasures like listening to music or sipping a cup of coffee can elevate brain activity, improving cognitive performance including in tasks demanding concentration and memory, according to a recent study.

A group of researchers looked at a new NYU Tandon School of Engineering study involving MindWatch a brain-monitoring technology.

MindWatch is an algorithm that analyses a person’s brain activity from data which is collected from a wearable device which can monitor electrodermal activity (EDA).

EDA is a measure of electrical changes in the skin triggered by emotional stress, often associated with sweat responses.

In the study, published in Nature Scientific Reports, participants were made to wear these skin-monitoring wristbands as well as brain-monitoring headbands to complete a range of cognitive tests.

The tests were conducted while the participants listened to music, drank their coffee and smelled perfumes reflecting their individual preferences.

These tests were completed again without any of those stimulants.

Researchers found that both music and coffee significantly influenced participants’ brain arousal, and put them in a “state of mind” that could “modulate their performance in the working memory tasks they were performing,” the NYU press release says.

The wearable device found that the stimulates specifically triggered increased “beta band” brain wave activity which is linked to peak cognitive performance.

Perfumes also had a slight positive effect, suggesting to researchers that there is a need for further investigation.

“The pandemic has impacted the mental well-being of many people across the globe and now more than ever, there is a need to seamlessly monitor the negative impact of everyday stressors on one’s cognitive function,” says Rose Faghih, an associate professor of biomedical engineering who developed MindWatch in six years.

“Right now MindWatch is still under development, but our eventual goal is that it will contribute to technology that could allow any person to monitor his or her own brain cognitive arousal in real-time, detecting moments of acute stress or cognitive disengagement, for example.

“At those times, MindWatch could ‘nudge’ a person towards simple and safe interventions — perhaps listening to music — so they could get themselves into a brain state in which they feel better and perform job or school tasks more successfully, professor Faghih added.

The specific tests used in this study involved a working memory task, called the n-back test which involves presenting a sequence of stimuli to the participants, in this case, images or sounds.

It was shown one by one, and people were asked to indicate whether the current stimulus matched the one presented "n" items back in the sequence.

This study employed a 1-back test — the participant responded "yes" when the current stimulus is the same as the one presented one item back — and a more challenging 3-back test, asking the same for three items back.

Three types of music were also tested out, there was energetic and relaxing music familiar to the participants, as well as novel AI-generated music that reflected the subject’s tastes.

Results showed that familiar, energetic music led to the best performance, followed by AI-generated music tailored to the participant’s taste.

Coffee and perfume had lesser but still noticeable positive impacts.

The MindWatch team wish to conduct further experiments to confirm the tool’s reliability and understand the broader effectiveness of various interventions on brain activity.

Researchers have noted that while specific interventions might generally boost brain performance, individual results may vary.

The study is published in the journal Nature.