It's no secret that exercise improves mood, but new research suggests that working out to music may give you a cognitive boost as well. Listening to music while exercising helped to increase scores on a verbal fluency test among cardiac rehabilitation patients. Participants reported feeling better emotionally and mentally after working out regardless of whether or not they listened to music, but the improvement in test performance after listening to music was more than double that of the non-music group. Listening to music is a great way to make exercising more enjoyable. Digital audio players are an excellent method to do this; it's wonderful to be able to exercise and have an essentially unlimited supply of music or audio lectures to listen to--very stress relieving!
EurekAlert! March 23, 2004