From Mozart to Metallica, tons of people enjoy listening to various types of music while they paint, write, or draw. Many believe that music helps inspire creativity, but an international Study conducted by English and Swedish researchers is challenging that idea.

Psychologists from Lancaster University, The University of Gavle, and The University of Central Lancashire say that their findings indicate music actually prevents creativity.

To come to their conclusions, researchers had participants complete verbal insight(洞察) problems designed to inspire creativity while sitting in a quiet room, and then again while music played in the background. They found that background music "significantly impaired( 削弱)" the participants' ability to complete tasks associated with verbal creativity.

The research team also tested background noises such as those commonly heard in a library, but found that such noises had no impact on subjects' creativity.

The tasks were simple word games. For example, participants were given three words, such as dress, dial, and flower. Then, they were asked to find a single word associated with all three that could be combined to form a common phrase or word. The single word, in this case, would be "sun" (sundress, sunflower, etc.)

Participants completed the tasks in either a quiet room, or while exposed to three different types of music; music with unfamiliar lyrics, instrumental music, or music with familiar lyrics.

"We found strong evidence of impaired performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions," says co-author Dr. Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University.

Dr. McLatchie and his colleagues theorize that music interferes (干 扰) with the verbal working memory processes of the brain, preventing creativity. Also, as far as the library background noise having seemingly no effect, the study's authors believe that was the case because library noises create a "steady state" environment that doesn't prevent concentration.

It's worth mentioning that even familiar music with well known lyrics impaired participants creativity, regardless of whether or not it produced a positive reaction, or whether participants typically studied or created while listening to music.

"To conclude, the findings here challenge the popular view that music inspires creativity, and instead show that music, regardless of the presence of semantic(语义的) content (no lyrics, familiar lyrics or unfamiliar lyrics), always prevent creative performance in insight problem solving", the study reads.

Scientists are poor forecasters of the future. But two trends can be confidently predicted. First, the world will get more crowded. There will be more than 9 billion people by 2050. Second, the world will get warmer and some governments won't prioritize the long-term measures needed to deal with climate change, even though science offers us a road-map to a low-carbon future.

That's why we should be promoters of new technology—without it the world can't provide the food and sustainable energy needed for an expanding population. But we should also be cautious, as new technologies, such as AI, may be hard to control. AI will undoubtedly become more aggressive in the future. Records of our movements, health and financial transactions will be stored in the cloud. The data may be used for justifiable reasons, such as protein folding and drug development, or to warn us of initial health risks, but its availability to Internet companies is already shifting the balance of power from governments to global-scale corporations.

Actually, it's beyond Earth that AI has the most enormous potential. Humans may have established bases beyond Earth by the year 2100. But don't ever expect mass emigration(移民)from Earth. It's a false belief that space offers an escape from our problems. Dealing with climate change on Earth is a piece of cake compared to terraforming(地球化)Mars.

Nevertheless, we should cheer on these brave human space adventurers. They'll be ill-adapted to a Martian habitat, so they'll have a super motive to redesign themselves. It's they, not those of us adapted to life on Earth. who will pioneer the post-human era (时代).

If post-humans make the shift from flesh and blood to fully artificial intelligence, they won't need an atmosphere of even gravity, so it's in deep space —not even on Mars that non biological "brains" may develop powers that we can't imagine. They may end up being mentally different from us. AI could jump-start a huge emigration and thus even more complex intelligence spreads through the universe.

But let's refocus from the science fiction of the far future, closer to the here and now. This century is special. It's the first, in Earth's 4.5-billion-year history where one species-ours—holds the planet's future in its hands. Our intelligence could initiate billions of years of post-human evolution(演化), even more amazing than that which led to us. On the other hand, humans could cause biological, environmental or cyber catastrophes that foreclose all this potential. If science is to save us, we need to think globally, sensibly and long-term—empowered by science, but guided by values that science alone can't provide

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