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Introduction: Initital hypothesis

To study factors that affect time to act, think, read and negate, I first recorded observations made with no external disturbance or distraction. In the second part of my experiment, I listened to the piano cover of *Requiem for a Dream* on my iPod and while following instructions on the Time to Think exhibit, I imagined myself playing the piece and made a conscious effort to recall finger positionings, dynamics, articulation etc I use while actually physically playing the piece.. My intitial hypothesis was that.. since I was forcing my brain to actively engage in another activity (imagining the physical act of playing the piano as well as the mental re-inforcement of emotions portrayed through the music), time taken to act, think, read and negate should considerably increase. I believed the multi-tasking of the brain would slow down my rate of response to the exhibit.

Observations

Time taken to respond to the exhibit while listening to music was surprisingly less than time taken in the base trial! This contradicts my initial hypothesis as my brain was performing different tasks, but not at the cost of each other!

Conclusion

The results of my experiment were waaaay different from what I'd anticipated! As response time decreased while listening to music, I feel music actually enhanced alertness and stimulated the brain more. But this confuses me further. Even though the brain does have different regions that perform different functions simultaneously, how does it manage to account for distractions? Perhaps, for a pianist, playing music would not amount to a distraction, but would these results hold true for someone who is not a musician?