2 April 2001
New opinions on the health benefits of Mozart
There has been controversy about the health benefits of Mozart's music ever since researchers claimed that listening to the K448 piano sonata improved spatial reasoning skills. Later research suggested that K448 can reduce the number of seizures in people with epilepsy. In the April Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Professor John Jenkins assesses international evidence on the effect of music on the brain, and calls for more work to be done to discover the key ingredient in the "Mozart Effect".
The background: Mozart, rats, and pre-school children
The original "Mozart effect" study in 1993 assessed volunteers' spatial reasoning after listening to sonata K448, relaxation tapes or silence. Results suggested
that just 10 minutes of Mozart's music improved their
performance of tasks such as paper-cutting and folding.
Later studies found that rats negotiated a maze faster
after hearing K448 than rats who were played white noise,
silence, or minimalist music. Elsewhere, children taught
a keyboard instrument for six months, learning simple
melodies (including Mozart), did better on spatial-temporal
tests than children who spent the time working with computers.
Controversy arose when other researchers could not reproduce
the positive results.
The "Yanni Effect"
It is not just Mozart's music which has been found to
enhance spatial reasoning. Some contemporary music does
too, including a piece by the Greek-American pianist/composer Yanni,
who writes instrumental 'new age' music with "similar
structure" to K448.
Why it might work - brain overlap
Scans have shown that the human brain uses a wide distribution
of areas to listen to music. Rhythm and pitch tend to
be processed in the left side, timbre and melody on the
right. Those parts of the brain which we use for spatial/temporal
tasks actually overlap with the music processing parts.
Professor Jenkins suggests that "listening to music would
prime the activation of those areas of the brain which
are concerned with spatial reasoning".
Epilepsy & the Mozart Effect
More recent work with epilepsy patients has indicated
what Professor Jenkins calls "a more impressive indication
of a Mozart effect". Once again, sonata K448 was played
to participants, most of whom showed a decrease in their
epileptiform activity - the patterns in the brain that
produce epileptic seizures.
The magic ingredient?
Computer analysis of pieces by various composers showed
that the music of Mozart and Bach shared a common factor,
a high degree of 'long-term periodicity', in other words,
wave forms repeated regularly, but not very close together,
throughout the piece of music. By contrast, music which
had no effect on either spatial reasoning or on epileptic
seizures did not have this factor. Professor Jenkins: "it
is suggested that music with a high degree of long-term
periodicity... would resonate within the brain to decrease
seizure activity and to enhance spatial-temporal performance".
Professor Jenkins concludes that any health benefits of listening to music are "not specific to Mozart's compositions", and calls for more research to be done on music other than K448, with longer listening periods. For the benefits to be of real use, we need to discover exactly what musical criteria have to be present for the "Mozart effect" to take place.
[ends]
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
For real audio of K448: http://www.musical-expressions.com/classical_music.php
Yanni info and audio: http://www.yanni.com
British Epilepsy Society: http://www.epilepsy.org.uk/
Background research: http://www.mindinst.org
Read the full article [PDF 51k]
