Mozart, Yanni, and seizures

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From a UK Epilepsy website:

http://www.epilepsy.org.uk/info/mozart.html

The Mozart Effect

The possible health benefits of the music of Mozart have been

assessed in the April 2001 edition of the Journal of the Royal

Society of Medicine.

There has been controversy about the benefits 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.

Professor 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 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.

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 suggests

that " listening to music would prime the activation of those areas of

the brain which are concerned with spatial reasoning " .

More recent work with epilepsy patients has indicated what Professor

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.

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 commented:

" 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 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

times. 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.

Apart from another Mozart Concerto, K488, only one other piece of

music has been found to have a similar effect, a song by the Greek-

American singer Yanni. Entitled 'Acroyali/Standing In Motion', it is

featured on his album " Live At The Acropolis " . This composition was

chosen by researchers because it was similar to Mozart's K448 in

tempo, structure, melodic and harmonic consonance and predictability.