Next time you go under the knife, you might want to request that the surgeon puts on Highway to Hell first.
As Consequence points out, a recent study showed that surgeons worked faster and more precisely when they were listening to AC/DC. Germany’s Heidelberg University set out to investigate the effects of music genre and volume on laparoscopic surgery. Surgeons were played “soft rock by The Beatles and hard rock by AC/DC," while the proficiency and speed of their incisions were analyzed in the settings of no music, music at medium volume and music at high volume.
The findings showed that the time needed to make a precision cut dropped from 236 seconds to 139 seconds, with a five percent increase in precision, when the surgeons listened to AC/DC at medium volume compared to no music. When the volume was turned up, the surgeons still worked faster than without music.
“Our results show that both soft rock and hard rock can enhance surgical performance,” said lead researcher Cui Yang [via The Sun]. “For hard rock music, the positive effect was especially noticeable when the music was played in high volume. It is possible that music with high rhythmicity could provide a tempo to keep up the speed of the performance and thus enhance task performance.”