A small pilot brain-imaging study conducted in Japan has found that listening to a participant’s preferred Japanese pop music may be associated with higher visual memory recall and better self-rated focus, compared with unpleasant noise or silence. The study involved five healthy university participants and used functional MRI to observe brain activity during the tasks, with findings published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Led by Yoshiko Tojo of the Ibaraki Prefectural University of Health Sciences, the research aimed to explore how self-selected J-Pop relates to visual memory retrieval and regional brain activity. Participants performed a visual memory task while lying in an MRI scanner, allowing researchers to track neural responses in real time.
The work sits within a broader discussion about studying with music. While classical music has often been touted as a cognitive aid, the popular media’s Mozart effect narrative does not reliably translate to everyday study habits, and many students do not choose classical instrumental pieces for revision.
In fact, contemporary students frequently choose popular music with familiar lyrics. Researchers note that meaningful speech and background vocals can disrupt the brain’s processing of language and memorisation of verbal material, complicating assumptions that music always helps learning.
Nonetheless, the study considered that familiar and enjoyable music could improve mood, reduce stress, and boost motivation to tackle difficult tasks, potentially affecting different types of learning in distinct ways depending on the background noise.
Tojo’s team examined whether preferred background music might support memory processing through emotional engagement, focusing on neural mechanisms beyond the traditional classical music narrative.
Participants completed the experiment under three auditory conditions: a self-selected pleasant J-Pop track, an abrasive composite sound comprising ambulance sirens and earthquake alarms, and a silent baseline with only the scanner’s rhythmic thumping present.
After the memory tasks, participants rated their subjective focus and the pleasantness of each sound environment, enabling a comparison of behavioural performance with neural data.
Behaviourally, recall accuracy was highest when participants listened to the J-Pop track, averaging about 82 percent, compared with roughly 76 percent in the silent baseline and 71 percent under the alarm sounds.
Neuroimaging revealed condition-dependent shifts in brain activity. The anterior insula, a region linked with evaluating subjective emotions and maintaining attention, showed higher average activity during the J-Pop condition than the other two environments.
In contrast, activity in the temporo-occipital visual association cortex—the brain area involved in higher-order visual processing and memory—peaked during the abrasive alarm condition and was lowest in the silent baseline.
The researchers caution that the small sample size of five participants limits statistical power, meaning the observed behavioural and neural differences cannot be generalised to wider populations.
Another limitation was the use of different image sets for each sound condition, which prevented recognition from prior exposure but might have made some sets inherently easier or harder to remember.
The study focused solely on a visual memory task with a single music genre, leaving open questions about whether similar patterns would occur with verbal learning tasks such as reading or vocabulary memorisation.
Future work with larger and more diverse groups is needed to verify these trends and determine when studying with background music might be beneficial for different learners and tasks.
Although these initial observations do not establish that listening to preferred music inherently improves memory, they indicate that emotionally positive background music is not universally detrimental to studying, and they pave the way for further exploration into how personal listening habits affect the brain.
The study is titled “Preferred J-pop music and visual memory retrieval: an exploratory pilot fMRI study” and was authored by Yoshiko Tojo.
