Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Bedtime Music, Involuntary Musical Imagery, and Sleep

2021; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 32; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0956797621989724

1467-9280

Michael K. Scullin, Chenlu Gao, Paul Fillmore,

Sleep and related disorders

Many people listen to music for hours every day, often near bedtime. We investigated whether music listening affects sleep, focusing on a rarely explored mechanism: involuntary musical imagery (earworms). In Study 1 ( N = 199, mean age = 35.9 years), individuals who frequently listen to music reported persistent nighttime earworms, which were associated with worse sleep quality. In Study 2 ( N = 50, mean age = 21.2 years), we randomly assigned each participant to listen to lyrical or instrumental-only versions of popular songs before bed in a laboratory, discovering that instrumental music increased the incidence of nighttime earworms and worsened polysomnography-measured sleep quality. In both studies, earworms were experienced during awakenings, suggesting that the sleeping brain continues to process musical melodies. Study 3 substantiated this possibility by showing a significant increase in frontal slow oscillation activity, a marker of sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Thus, some types of music can disrupt nighttime sleep by inducing long-lasting earworms that are perpetuated by spontaneous memory-reactivation processes.