Classical music, educational learning, and slow wave sleep: A targeted memory reactivation experiment

Poor sleep in college students compromises the memory consolidation processes necessary to retain course materials. A solution may lie in targeting reactivation of memories during sleep (TMR). Fifty undergraduate students completed a college-level microeconomics lecture (mathematics-based) while listening to distinctive classical music (Chopin, Beethoven, and Vivaldi). After they fell asleep, we re-played the classical music songs (TMR) or a control noise during slow wave sleep. Relative to the control condition, the TMR condition showed an 18% improvement for knowledge transfer items that measured concept integration (d = 0.63), increasing the probability of "passing" the test with a grade of 70 or above (OR = 4.68, 95%CI: 1.21, 18.04). The benefits of TMR did not extend to a 9-month follow-up test when performance dropped to floor levels, demonstrating that long-term-forgetting curves are largely resistant to experimentally-consolidated memories. Spectral analyses revealed greater frontal theta activity during slow wave sleep in the TMR condition than the control condition (d = 0.87), and greater frontal theta activity across conditions was associated with protection against long-term-forgetting at the next-day and 9-month follow-up tests (rs = 0.42), at least in female students. Thus, students can leverage instrumental music-which they already commonly pair with studying-to help prepare for academic tests, an approach that may promote course success and persistence.