Research
ADHD and Background Sound: What the Research Shows
Music, white noise and everything in between, as tested on people with ADHD. Peer-reviewed studies only, including the results that cut against the popular advice. Every figure was checked against its primary source.
Last verified · 10 sources
Key statistics
- White or pink noise gave young people with ADHD a small benefit (g = 0.249) and people without ADHD a small harm.
- In 43 children with ADHD, about one third did worse with white noise, mostly the more hyperactive ones.
- Short silences inside steady noise disrupted adults with ADHD more than adults without it.
- Irrelevant background sound cut recall more for adults with ADHD than for controls.
- In classrooms, video distracted boys with ADHD; music helped some and hurt others.
- Young adults with ADHD symptoms played more music while studying, and 20.3% preferred it stimulating.
- Music with 16 Hz modulation helped attention most for people with more ADHD symptoms, in a Brain.fm-linked study.
- 11.4% of US children have been diagnosed with ADHD; 6.76% of adults worldwide have symptoms.
"Put on brown noise" and "try music for ADHD" are some of the most repeated pieces of focus advice online. The research behind them is real, but smaller and more conditional than the advice suggests: the same sound can help one person with ADHD and hurt another. Here is what the studies actually tested and found.
Meta-analysis
White and pink noise for ADHD
A 2024 meta-analysis found that white or pink noise gave a small benefit on lab attention tasks to young people with ADHD or high attention problems (g = 0.249, 13 studies, 335 participants) and a small harm to those without (g = −0.212); no studies of brown noise met its criteria (Nigg et al., 2024).
The best single summary is a 2024 meta-analysis that pooled randomized lab studies of children and college-age young adults with ADHD or elevated ADHD symptoms. White and pink noise produced a small, statistically significant improvement on attention tasks, with little variation between studies.
For comparison groups without ADHD, the same noise made performance slightly worse. And the review searched for studies of brown noise, the color most recommended for ADHD online, and found none it could include. The authors call for more studies, including on what volume is safe and appropriate.
Effect of white or pink noise on attention tasks
Source: Nigg et al. (2024), Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Who it helps
Why the average hides a split
In 43 children with a clinical ADHD diagnosis, white noise had no significant effect on the group as a whole: children with more inattentive traits did better with it, those with more hyperactive and impulsive traits did worse, and about one third performed worse under noise (Söderlund et al., 2024).
The idea that noise helps ADHD comes largely from a 2007 study by Söderlund and colleagues. White noise improved memory performance in children with ADHD and worsened it in control children. The authors proposed the Moderate Brain Arousal model: people with ADHD may need more stimulation from outside to perform at their best, so a level of noise that distracts most people can steady them.
A 2024 study from the same research tradition looked closer, in 43 children with a clinical ADHD diagnosis. Across the whole group, noise made no significant difference. Underneath that, children with more inattentive traits did better with noise and those with more hyperactive and impulsive traits did worse. A pooled small benefit and a third of children doing worse are both true at once.
Sources: Söderlund et al. (2024), Scandinavian Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology; Söderlund et al. (2007), Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Steady sound
Gaps in the sound may matter more than the sound
In 132 adults (66 with self-reported ADHD), brief silences breaking into continuous white noise disrupted short-term memory more in the ADHD group, while brief bursts of noise breaking into silence disrupted the group without ADHD more; the noise itself did not improve recall for either group (Elbe et al., 2025).
A 2025 study tested 132 adults online, half of whom reported having ADHD, on a short-term memory task. In one condition, white noise played steadily and was occasionally broken by a brief silence. In the other, silence was occasionally broken by a brief burst of white noise. About 20% of trials had one of these interruptions.
The two groups reacted in opposite ways. A sudden silence inside steady noise hurt the ADHD group more; a sudden burst of noise in silence hurt the other group more. The noise itself did not improve recall for anyone, which the authors suggest may be because it only played during part of each trial. Their practical point: if you use noise to focus, dropouts in it, such as a stuttering stream, may cost people with ADHD more than they cost others.
ADHD status here was self-reported and the task was done online, so this is one study to replicate, not a settled finding.
Distraction
Adults with ADHD are more disrupted by background sound
In 64 adults (32 with ADHD), irrelevant background sound reduced serial recall more for the ADHD group than for controls, though the disruption faded over the course of the task (Pelletier et al., 2016).
The "irrelevant sound effect" is a long-established finding: sound you are trying to ignore, especially sound that changes from moment to moment like speech, still lowers your memory for the order of things. This study ran 32 adults with ADHD and 32 controls through a recall task, in silence and with background sound.
The ADHD group recalled less in both conditions, and the background sound cut their recall by more than it cut the controls'. One encouraging detail: the extra disruption shrank as the task went on, which the authors read as sustained attention being intact. For the evidence on speech and lyrics in people without ADHD, see the research on lyrics and background speech.
Source: Pelletier et al. (2016), Journal of Attention Disorders
Music
Music in the classroom: it depends on the child
In a classroom study of 41 boys with ADHD and 26 without, video was a significant distraction, especially for boys with ADHD, while music's effect depended on the child: some did worse with it and others did better than with no distractor, a split repeated in 86 more boys with ADHD (Pelham et al., 2011).
One of the few studies to test music with children with ADHD did it in a classroom. Boys worked with no distractor, with music, or with a video playing. Video was clearly distracting, and most of all for boys with ADHD. Medication improved the work of boys with ADHD in every condition.
Music had no single effect. Some boys did worse with it, and others did better than they did with nothing playing. A second study of 86 more boys with ADHD found the same individual differences. We report only what the abstract states; the paper is not open access.
Source: Pelham et al. (2011), Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology
Habits
How young adults with ADHD actually use music
In a survey of 434 young adults, the 118 who screened positive for ADHD reported more background music while studying (4.75 vs 4.21 on a 1 to 7 scale) and more often preferred stimulating music for demanding tasks (20.3% vs 11.7%), but rated music's effect on their concentration no differently (Lachance et al., 2025).
A 2025 survey asked 434 people aged 17 to 30 how often they play background music during different activities. The 118 who screened positive for ADHD on a self-report scale played more music while studying. For the other demanding activities asked about, such as reading, writing and problem-solving, the two groups did not differ.
The bigger difference was in what they chose. For demanding tasks, most people in both groups preferred relaxing music, but the ADHD-screened group picked stimulating music almost twice as often. Despite that, both groups rated music's effect on their concentration and mood about the same. This is a self-report survey, so it describes habits and beliefs, not whether the music helped.
Preferred music for demanding tasks
Designed music
Music engineered for attention
In an online experiment with 82 adults, music with added 16 Hz (beta-range) amplitude modulation helped sustained attention more than 8 Hz or 32 Hz modulation for people reporting more ADHD symptoms; 2 authors worked for Brain.fm, which made the music (Woods et al., 2024).
A 2024 paper tested whether adding fast, regular volume fluctuations (amplitude modulation) to music changes attention. In its final experiment, 82 adults recruited online did a sustained-attention task while hearing the same music with modulation added at 8, 16 or 32 Hz. For people who reported more ADHD symptoms, the 16 Hz version, in the beta range linked to sustained attention, helped more than the others.
It is a real, peer-reviewed result, and also a limited one: a single online experiment, ADHD measured by a self-report questionnaire rather than diagnosis, and a commercial interest. The paper discloses that one author is a Brain.fm employee with equity options, another worked there during the research, and Brain.fm produced the modulated music. We haven't found an independent replication yet.
Context
How many people this concerns
About 1 in 9 US children aged 3 to 17 (11.4%) had ever been diagnosed with ADHD in 2022 (Danielson et al., 2024); worldwide, an estimated 6.76% of adults have ADHD symptoms and 2.58% have ADHD that began in childhood and persisted (Song et al., 2021).
In the US, 11.4% of children aged 3 to 17 had ever received an ADHD diagnosis in 2022, about 7.1 million children, and 10.5% had ADHD at the time of the survey. Those figures come from parent reports in a national survey of 45,169 children.
For adults, a global meta-analysis gives two numbers that are often confused. 6.76% of adults have ADHD symptoms, whether or not they started in childhood; 2.58% have ADHD that began in childhood and persisted. The two studies measure different things in different populations, so compare within each pair, not across them.
ADHD prevalence
Sources: Danielson et al. (2024), Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology; Song et al. (2021), Journal of Global Health
Method
How these were checked
Every figure was checked against the paper itself. Three studies are open access and were read in full; for the paywalled ones, we used only what the publisher's abstract states, and say so in the section. Citation details were confirmed through Crossref. Where news coverage and a paper disagreed, the paper won.
Claims we left out on purpose:
- "Brown noise helps ADHD." No published study has tested it; the 2024 meta-analysis found none to include.
- "For some kids, music worked nearly as well as medication." Attributed to the 2011 classroom study in news coverage, but not in its abstract, and we couldn't check the full paper.
- "Nearly 80% of adults listen to music at work." Widely repeated next to ADHD advice, but it isn't about ADHD and we couldn't trace it to a study.
- Music therapy results. Therapy sessions with a trained therapist are a different thing from background sound while you work, so a meta-analysis of them doesn't answer this page's question.
- Figures from companies that sell focus audio, ours included, unless they point to a paper we could read.
Takeaways
What this means if you have ADHD
No sound is proven to help everyone with ADHD, and some make some people worse. The pattern across these studies is consistent enough to act on, though. Background sound you have to ignore, especially speech and video, costs people with ADHD more than others. Steady noise helps some people with ADHD a little and hurts others. Interruptions and changes in the sound are part of the cost. So the useful test is personal: try a steady, wordless background against silence on the same kind of task, and keep whichever lets you work longer.
That is the idea behind Underlay.fm: focus sound, not focus music. It plays a steady layer of texture with no melody, no lyrics and no track changes, set by the work mode and mood you pick. No study has tested Underlay.fm itself, and given the results above, it won't suit everyone with ADHD. You can try a session free and compare it with silence. More on the approach is on our ADHD page.
Common questions
Does white noise help with ADHD?+
A little, on average, for some people. A 2024 meta-analysis of 13 lab studies found a small benefit for young people with ADHD or high attention problems (g = 0.249) and a small harm for people without ADHD. But in a 2024 study of 43 children with diagnosed ADHD, about one third did worse with noise, and in a 2025 study of adults, white noise did not improve memory. It is worth testing for yourself rather than assuming.
Is brown noise good for ADHD?+
Nobody has tested it. The 2024 meta-analysis on noise and ADHD searched for brown noise studies and found none that met its criteria; the evidence it pooled is for white and pink noise. Brown noise is white noise with the high frequencies turned far down, so it may behave differently. Claims that brown noise is proven to help ADHD are not backed by published research.
Should people with ADHD listen to music while studying?+
The research says it depends on the person. In a classroom study, music helped some boys with ADHD and hurt others, while video distracted almost everyone. Young adults with ADHD symptoms already play more music while studying than their peers (4.75 vs 4.21 on a 1 to 7 scale), and rate its effect on their concentration about the same. Background speech is a known problem for adults with ADHD, so music without lyrics is the safer test.
Why do people with ADHD focus better with background noise?+
The leading theory is the Moderate Brain Arousal model: people with ADHD may need more outside stimulation to reach the arousal level where they work best, so some noise helps them while it hurts others. A 2007 study of children supported this, and later studies found the benefit is real but small and depends on the person. It is still a theory, not a settled mechanism.
Can background sound make ADHD focus worse?+
Yes. Irrelevant background sound reduced memory more in adults with ADHD than in adults without it. In children with ADHD, about one third did worse with white noise. And in adults with ADHD, short gaps of silence inside a steady noise were more disruptive than for people without ADHD, which matters if your audio stutters or drops out.
Does music designed for focus work better for ADHD?+
One study says it might. In 82 adults, music with added 16 Hz amplitude modulation helped sustained attention more for people with more ADHD symptoms. It was a single online experiment using self-reported symptoms, not diagnoses, and 2 of the authors worked for Brain.fm, which made the music. It has not been replicated independently.
Sources
- Nigg, J. T., Bruton, A., Kozlowski, M. B., Johnstone, J. M., & Karalunas, S. L. (2024). Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: Do White Noise or Pink Noise Help With Task Performance in Youth With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder or With Elevated Attention Problems?. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 63(8), 778 to 788. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2023.12.014
- Söderlund, G. B. W., Hadjikhani, N., Thorsson, M., et al. (2024). Sensory white noise in clinical ADHD: Who benefits from noise, and who performs worse?. Scandinavian Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology, 12(1), 92 to 99. doi:10.2478/sjcapp-2024-0010
- Söderlund, G., Sikström, S., & Smart, A. (2007). Listen to the noise: noise is beneficial for cognitive performance in ADHD. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(8), 840 to 847. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2007.01749.x
- Elbe, P., Marsh, J. E., Sörman, D., Nyberg, L., Vega-Mendoza, M., & Ljungberg, J. (2025). Differential impacts of addition and omission deviants on the working memory performance of adults with and without self-reported ADHD. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, online ahead of print, 1 to 16. doi:10.1080/20445911.2025.2563538
- Pelletier, M. F., Hodgetts, H. M., Lafleur, M. F., Vincent, A., & Tremblay, S. (2016). Vulnerability to the irrelevant sound effect in adult ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 20(4), 306 to 316. doi:10.1177/1087054713492563
- Pelham, W. E., Waschbusch, D. A., Hoza, B., Gnagy, E. M., Greiner, A. R., Sams, S. E., Vallano, G., Majumdar, A., & Carter, R. L. (2011). Music and video as distractors for boys with ADHD in the classroom: comparison with controls, individual differences, and medication effects. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 39(8), 1085 to 1098. doi:10.1007/s10802-011-9529-z
- Lachance, K. A., Pelland-Goulet, P., & Gosselin, N. (2025). Listening habits and subjective effects of background music in young adults with and without ADHD. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1508181. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1508181
- Woods, K. J. P., Sampaio, G., James, T., Przysinda, E., Cordovez, B., Hewett, A., Spencer, A. E., Morillon, B., & Loui, P. (2024). Rapid modulation in music supports attention in listeners with attentional difficulties. Communications Biology, 7, 1376. doi:10.1038/s42003-024-07026-3
- Danielson, M. L., Claussen, A. H., Bitsko, R. H., Katz, S. M., Newsome, K., Blumberg, S. J., Kogan, M. D., & Ghandour, R. (2024). ADHD prevalence among U.S. children and adolescents in 2022: diagnosis, severity, co-occurring disorders, and treatment. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 53(3), 343 to 360. doi:10.1080/15374416.2024.2335625
- Song, P., Zha, M., Yang, Q., Zhang, Y., Li, X., & Rudan, I. (2021). The prevalence of adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a global systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Global Health, 11, 04009. doi:10.7189/jogh.11.04009
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