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Categorising entire musical genres by a single piece of music is simplistic at best.

I love metal, I need to get a medical alert bracelet that says to only play death metal if I ever fall into a coma

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The main finding: "HeavyM induced the greatest changes in brain responses, whereas ClassM showed a tendency to reduce brain activity. "

Using Volbeat of all bands too, for heavy metal.

Was there any attempt to learn the musical preferences of the subjects prior to the study? Metal is an exceedingly broad genre and many of its musicians were at some point classical. They made the switch because metal is far more interesting and diverse, and gives them opportunities to demonstrate virtuosic playing in ways that classical can no longer.

The study is basically interesting but appears not to have really understood the nature of musical stimulus.

"the patient flat lined doctor, his chart only says"

> In case of emergency, play Dethklok

honestly this is an extremely important point... there's just a vast gamut of metal out there, and there's a big difference between hardcore thrash metal and post-apocalyptic ambient metal etc etc

and "classical" is similarly diverse from Nachtmusik to 1812 overture to Carmina Burana there's a huge range of musical stimuli. heck Haydn's Surprise Symphony was written to prevent people from relaxing!