Apparently, listening to Miley Cyrus’s music over an extended period tends to increase your creativity, logic and intelligence — at least that was the conclusion reached by a British clinical psychologist, Emma Gray.  This conclusion has shattered my pre-conceived notions of what is quality in music.
   Now I don’t want to focus on Miley specifically, regardless of how buffoonish her behavior is.  What interests me is to help you and I maximize music to aid our respective study habits.
    I recently helped a good friend of mine prepare for a science exam. For years, I shave set my own Pandora station to play anything from classical to jazz to movie soundtracks because the absence of lyrics works for me.  The improvement of mathematical acuity as I listen to Mozart for a short period has been common knowledge for years, so I’ve gone to that while studying. As we worked together, I noticed that my friend had his Spotify account running in the background, as it played music that spanned three to four decades, including Britney Spears.  This is a married man with a five-year-old who welds in his garage for a hobby  while he seeks an engineering degree. I thought, does the music he listens to as he studies help or hurt his concentration?
    Fortunately for all of us, scientists far better than me secured research funds and dedicated a lot of time to answering this question.  
   One result of this research has shown that music helps build pathways between the two halves of your brain.  If you are the logical, analytical “left-brain” type, music can connect you with intuition, and the more creative “right-brain” personalities can strengthen your logical thinking.  Elsewhere, Bulgarian psychologist Dr. Georgi Lozanov has connected Baroque music (e.g. Pachelbel, Vivaldi) with increased language learning and retention.  Anne J. Blood, researcher with McGill University in Montreal, reported seeing music stimulate the same parts of the brain that are activated by reward and emotion (PNAS, vol. 98 no. 20 (2001)).
    So, how does this help you?  Well, most researchers seem to agree it is not so much the content of the music as it is the pace of the music. They recommend music that plays at about 50-80 beats per minute, which actually makes a lot of sense — that is the resting range of the human heartbeat.  The sweet spot appears to be around 60 bpm, which allows the heart to relax into a rhythm that matches the music. This stimulates the brain to the ideal state of focus, which allows you to absorb your material effectively.
    So, if you have an art, English or other creative assignment or test, pump up the pop music. Math, science or foreign language work to do? Break out the jazz or classical.  And apparently, people perform just a notch better when the music is randomly given to them, instead of selected by the listener.