Can Binaural Beats Increase Your Focus? Exploring the Efects of Music in Participants' Conscious and Brain Activity Responses

Music is a universal medium that can elicit strong emotion, and can significantly help us in gaining focus while doing specific tasks. However, it is unclear what types of music can help to improve focus while doing other activities. In this paper, we investigate the effects of six different music stimuli on participants' verbal and physiological responses while identifying genuine and acted emotions from video clips. Initial analysis was conducted on the comments participants made on the different stimuli in order to identify emerging patterns. Then, participants' verbal and EEG responses were collected, processed and analyzed to classify two types of emotion. Empirical analysis of the results show that binaural beats, which are believed to increase focus on tasks, can often cause discomfort and therefore hinder focus. On the other hand, music containing a sombre tone, or familiar popular music with high level valence can help improve focus. Identifying which music stimuli can improve focus can be highly beneficial in managing day-to-day tasks and activities. This study will also be useful in broadening the range of music stimuli used in affective computing studies.