• Nivedita Mitta, Vivekanandan Jayakumar, Nikhil Dhanpal, Jeffrey Pradeep Raj, Roshini Antony Prabhakaran, Karthikeyan Kannan, Anirudh Venugopal, and S G Subramanyam.
• Department of General Surgery, St. John's Medical College and Hospital, John Nagar, Bangalore, 560034, India. niveditamitta@gmail.com.
• World J Surg. 2019 Nov 1; 43 (11): 2740-2746.

IntroductionMusic is any sound that is perceived as pleasingly harmonious. The link between music and healthcare can be traced long back in the history of mankind. Thus, our study aimed at assessing the impact of different genre of music on the cognition functioning, memory and attention levels of the surgeons.Materials And MethodsIt was a single-arm interventional trial assessing 45 surgeons from different specialities. Each participant was expected to do 5 sets of tasks, one set each for the 5 music tracks played. Each task set further contained 5 different types of tasks, namely trail marking, jigsaw puzzle, backward counting, comprehension and memory game using cards. The 5 music tracks included ambient OR noise, music of personal preference, western classical, heavy metal and pop music. Scores were assigned for each task and compared.ResultsThe total score for music of personal choice was much less (19.68) when compared to the other genre and that for pop was the highest (25.03). Memory card tests and backward counting (tests of short-term memory) were comparatively better with music of personal choice. However, trail marking (test of speed) and jigsaw puzzle and comprehension tests (tests of complex neurological functions) were least performed when music of personal choice was played.ConclusionMusic of choice may help in short-term memory recall, but an over-familiarity with the music played can serve as a distractor thus affecting the speed and accuracy.

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