Mozart…

I have heard it said that the music of Mozart has a uniquely helpful effect upon the brain; that it changes the brain in ways that no other music can. Indeed, you can buy specially selected collections of Mozart pieces on CD to play to yourself to improve your performance in tests or to increase you IQ. I suspect that the claims are exaggerated. It does seem remarkable that one composer could have tapped into some inner truth about the brain that was missed by so many others. The evidence to support the claim is fairly sketchy.

The phenomenon seems to have begun as the result of research done in 1995 by two researchers at the University of California. They found an effect, lasting 20 minutes or so, that increased their 79 test subjects’ ability to complete spatial reasoning tests. It was a very specific study on a small number of students comparing listening to the first ten minutes of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K.448) against a control group who listened to either nothing or an audio book. All groups in the study improved their scores after their listening period, but the Mozart group increased more (62%) than the other two groups (11% and 14%).

Subsequently it was shown that rats played 12 hours of the Sonata in D daily for over two months moved through a maze more quickly (27% faster) and with 37% fewer errors than control groups that either had silence or white noise played to them. There have also been experiments to show that certain pieces of music reduce the severity of epileptic seizures – those pieces are Mozart’s K.448, K.488 (Piano Concerto No. 23) and a piece by the Greek composer Yanni entitled ‘Standing In Motion’. This last piece is apparently similar to the other pieces in tempo and structure.

Where this leads us is to the intriguing idea that exposure to a stimulus like music may have an effect on our mood, behaviour, perception or other functions of our brains. Similar effects have been shown for groups read to from Stephen King novels versus a control group not read to from a Stephen King novel. Unfortunately, these snippets of interesting science have exploded into wild assertions that the music of Mozart uniquely interacts with the listener’s brain in a way that no other stimulus can match. A whole pseudoscience of music therapy has evolved allowing the vulnerable to be exploited by (maybe well-meaning, but ultimately deluded) people who turn a simple idea into a money making opportunity. As always these people feed on the anxieties of new parents or others in need of help, and sell them something for which there is little or no evidence of any positive benefit.

Questions…

1. What does the K stand for in K.448?
2. What kind of neuron carries the musical information from the ear to the brain?
3. What are the axons of vertebrate neurons coated in and what function does this coating perform?
4. What energy change takes place in a neuron?
5. What kind of neuron carries information from the brain to muscles?