J R Soc Med 2001;94:170-172
© 2001 Royal Society of Medicine
The Mozart effect
J S Jenkins MD FRCP
40 Hampstead Way, London NW11 7JL, UK
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INTRODUCTION
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In 1993 Rauscher
et
al.1 made the
surprising claim that, after
listening to Mozart's sonata for two pianos
(K448) for 10 minutes,
normal subjects showed significantly better spatial
reasoning
skills than after periods of listening to relaxation instructions
designed
to lower blood pressure or silence. The mean spatial IQ scores
were 8
and 9 points higher after listening to the music than
in the other two
conditions. The enhancing effect did not extend
beyond 10-15 minutes. These
results proved controversial. Some
investigators were unable to reproduce the
findings
2,3,4
but
others confirmed that listening to Mozart's sonata K448 produced
a small
increase in spatial-temporal performance, as measured
by various tests derived
from the Stanford—Binet scale
such as paper-cutting and folding
procedures
5,6,7
or pencil-and-paper
maze
tasks
8. However,
Rauscher has stressed that the Mozart
effect is limited to spatial temporal
reasoning and that there
is no enhancement of general intelligence; some of
the negative
results, she thinks, may have been due to inappropriate test
procedures
9.
So, does the Mozart effect exist? The generality of the original positive
findings has been criticized on the grounds that any Mozart effect is due to
`enjoyment arousal' occasioned by this particular music and would not take
place in the absence of its appreciation. This interpretation is countered by
animal experiments in which separate groups of rats were exposed, in
utero followed by a postpartum period of 60 days, to Mozart's piano
sonata K448, to minimalist music by the composer Philip Glass, to white noise
or to silence and then tested for their ability to negotiate a maze. The
Mozart group completed the maze test significantly more quickly and with fewer
errors (P <0.01) than the other three groups; thus, enjoyment and
musical appreciation is unlikely to have been the basis of the
improvement10.
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LOCALIZATION OF MUSIC PERCEPTION AND SPATIAL IMAGING WITHIN THE
BRAIN
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An explanation for the results obtained after listening to music
may lie in
the manner in which music and spatial imaging are
processed within the brain.
There have been many studies on
the localization of music perception.
Techniques such as positron
emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic
resonance
scanning, together with studies on localized brain lesions,
have
shown that listening to music activates a wide distribution
of brain areas.
The primary auditory area lies classically in
the transverse and superior
temporal gyri, but particular components
of musical appreciation involving
rhythm, pitch, metre, melody,
and timbre are processed in many different areas
of the brain.
These range from the prefrontal cortex and superior temporal
gyrus
to the precuneus of the parietal lobe, with much interconnection
of the
different networks
activated
11,12,13.
Rhythm and pitch
discrimination are processed mainly in the left hemisphere
whereas
timbre and melody are found chiefly in the right. Appreciation
of
metre does not appear to show hemispheric preference.
Brain areas concerned with mental imaging as tested by spatial temporal
tasks (such as the building of three-dimensional cube assemblies in sequence)
were also mapped by PET
scanning14. The
results show that the areas activated include the prefrontal, temporal and
precuneus regions which overlap with those involved in music processing. It is
suggested, therefore, that listening to music would prime the activation of
those areas of the brain which are concerned with spatial reasoning.
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LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF MUSIC ON THE BRAIN
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The original experiments on adults exposed to Mozart's music
were of short
duration only. In related
experiments
15,
long-term
effects of music were studied in groups of pre-school children
aged
3-4 years who were given keyboard music lessons for six
months, during which
time they studied pitch intervals, fingering
techniques, sight reading,
musical notation and playing from
memory. At the end of training all the
children were able to
perform simple melodies by Beethoven and Mozart. When
they did
they were then subjected to spatial-temporal reasoning tests
calibrated
for age, and their performance was more than 30% better than
that
of children of similar age given either computer lessons
for 6 months or no
special training (
P <0.001). The improvement
was limited to
spatial-temporal reasoning; there was no effect
on spatial recognition. The
effect lasted unchanged for 24 hours
after the end of the music lessons but
the precise duration
of the enhancement was not further explored. The longer
duration
of the effects than in previous reports was attributed to the
length
of exposure to music and the greater plasticity of the
young brain. In further
experiments of this kind it has been
claimed that the enhancement of
spatial-temporal reasoning in
children after piano training has resulted in
significantly
greater scores in higher
mathematics
16.
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MUSIC AND THE ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHIC PATTERN
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Attempts have been made to investigate the electrical discharge
patterns of
brain areas after exposure to music. In one study,
listening to the Mozart
sonata K448 for 10 minutes, in contrast
to listening to a short story,
resulted in enhanced synchrony
of the firing pattern of the right frontal and
left temporoparietal
areas of the brain, which persisted for 12
minutes
6. Listening
to
the sonata was also accompanied by increased power of the beta
spectrum of
the electroencephalogram in the right temporal,
left temporal and right
frontal regions
17.
In a further study,
listening to music (not that of Mozart) also resulted in
greater
beta power, particularly in the area of the precuneus
bilaterally
18.
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MOZART EFFECT ON EPILEPSY
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A more impressive indication of a Mozart effect is to be seen
in epilepsy.
In 23 of 29 patients with focal discharges or bursts
of generalized spike and
wave complexes who listened to the
Mozart piano sonata K448 there was a
significant decrease in
epileptiform activity as shown by the
electroencephalogram
(EEG)
19.
Some
individual patients showed especially striking improvement.
In one male,
unconscious with status epilepticus, ictal patterns
were present 62% of the
time, whereas during exposure to Mozart's
music this value fell to 21%. In two
other patients with status
epilepticus continuous bilateral spike and wave
complexes were
recorded 90-100% of the time before the music, suddenly falling
to
about 50% 5 minutes after the music began. The fact that improvement
took
place even in a comatose patient demonstrates again that
appreciation of the
music is not a necessary feature of the
Mozart effect.
To determine whether this music could exert a longer effect, studies were
conducted in an eight-year-old girl with a particularly intractable form of
childhood epilepsy, the Lennox—Gastaut syndrome, with many drop attacks
accompanied by bilateral spike and wave complexes and focal discharges from
the right posterior temporal
area20. Mozart's
sonata was played every 10 minutes for each hour of the day when she was
awake. At the end of the waking period the number of clinical seizures had
fallen from 9 during the initial four hours to one during the last four hours
and the number of seconds during which general discharges occurred fell from
317 to 178. The following day the number of attacks was two in seven and half
hours.
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SPECIFICITY OF MOZART'S MUSIC
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To what extent are the changes attributable specifically to
Mozart's music?
Following the initial experiments of Rauscher
et
al.1 most
researchers have used Mozart's double piano sonata
K448, which the Mozart
authority Alfred Einstein called `one
of the most profound and most mature of
all Mozart's compositions',
but his piano concerto no 23 in A major K488 also
proved to
be
effective
8. Some
investigators observed that no enhancement
of spatial temporal tests was seen
after the minimalist music
of Philip
Glass
5, and there
was no improvement in epileptiform
EEG tracings after old-time pop
music
19. Rideout
et al., however,
report that a contemporary composition by the
Greek-American
musician Yanni, which they suggest is similar to the Mozart
sonata
in tempo, structure, melody and harmony, was also
effective
7.
In an
attempt to determine the physical characteristics which
were responsible for
the Mozart effect, Hughes and
Fino
21 subjected
a
wide range of music to computer analysis. As many as 81 selections
of Mozart,
67 of J C Bach, 67 of J S Bach, 39 of Chopin, and
148 from 55 other composers
were analysed. The characteristic
shown by much of Mozart's music and shared
with the two Bachs
was a high degree of long-term periodicity, especially
within
the 10-60 s range.
Another similarity between the music of Mozart and the two Bachs was the
emphasis on the average power of particular notes, notably G3 (196 Hz), C5
(523 Hz) and B5 (987 Hz). In contrast, Philip Glass' minimalist music and
old-time pop music, which had both proved without effect on spatial
behavioural tasks or on epilepsy, showed little long-term periodicity. It is
suggested that music with a high degree of long-term periodicity, whether of
Mozart or other composers, would resonate within the brain to decrease seizure
activity and to enhance spatial-temporal performance.
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CONCLUSION
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An enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning performance after
listening to
Mozart's music for 10 minutes has been reported
by several, but not all,
researchers. Even in the studies with
positive results the enhancement is
small and lasts about 12
minutes. The effect varies between individuals and
depends upon
the spatial tasks chosen; general intelligence is not affected.
Rather
more impressively, there is a beneficial effect on some patients
with
epilepsy. The results are not specific to Mozart's compositions
but the exact
musical criteria required have not been completely
defined.
The practical use of such observations is as yet uncertain, especially
since many of the experiments relate only to short listening periods to
Mozart's piano sonata K448. More studies are necessary, involving longer-term
exposure to Mozart and to a wide selection of other composers, before the
effect can be fully assessed.
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INTRODUCTION
LOCALIZATION OF MUSIC PERCEPTION...
