SOUNDSCAPES

The number of things competing for our attention is often overwhelming. Can dreamy soundscapes created with neuroscience help our bewildered brains to concentrate?

Words IAN TAYLOR

Illustrations SAM CHIVERS

You don’t need a scientific paper to tell you that music can change your mood or behaviour. We all know, instinctively, that it can. Your foot taps of its own accord at a gig. A high-energy playlist gets you moving at the gym. Tears flow when an old heartbreaker catches you unprepared.

So it’s not a huge leap of the imagination to think that the right music can also help our beleaguered brains perform better. Focus and productivity playlists attract millions of streams on music platforms. In labs, researchers are probing how sound can affect our ability to concentrate.

And a small number of companies are creating soundscapes and playlists, designed with insights from neuroscientific research to lull us into a trancelike state of hyperfocus and productivity. Background music with brains.

It sounds great to me, a man who has a mind that likes to wander and a to-do list that’s going nowhere. I like to think it’s evolution’s fault that I’m so easily distracted. Almost anything can seduce my focus from the task at hand: my inbox, my appetite, postal deliveries and passersby. Never mind the beguiling buzz of notifications on my phone, which I’ve had to put in a drawer so I can concentrate on writing this article. It’s no easier for you reading it. Chances are, your attention will be interrupted, on average, five times. More if you’re a multitasker or somebody who’s easily distracted.

The human brain evolved for vigilance. Recent neuroscience suggests our grey matter performs a kind of unconscious sweep for new information up to four times a second. It’s a mechanism that has kept us safe and sociable for millennia, but evolution didn’t see the internet coming, or the digital deluge that has arrived with it.

I’m sure we agree: it’s too much information. We’re overstimulated. Permanently distracted. Research from King’s College London suggests that the average Brit checks their phone 80 times a day.

In the war of attention, companies like Endel and Brain.fm are banking that a solution to calm our skittish minds lies somewhere in the background noise. They’re engineering ambient music with great precision (and artificial intelligence) to help us get stuff done.