Opinion – Luciano Melo: The Mozart effect and medicinal music

“Rhythm and harmony find their way to places within the soul.” This is one of Plato’s phrases, a synthesis of what we intuitively know: music and emotions are strongly connected. We don’t know the exact biological reasons that support the human relationship with musical notes. Nor, precisely, do we understand how music affects our cognition. Music is a mystery.

Enigma with great appeal especially for Frances Rauscher, psychologist and cellist. She united the first art with science. In her celebrated research at the University of California, she found that anyone who listened to Mozart’s Sonata in D major for two pianos for ten minutes gained 8 IQ points. Belatedly, attentive to the details of her study, she discovered that intellectual gain was restricted to spatial reasoning skills. This musical property has earned its name: the Mozart effect.

In practical terms, architects would more easily draw plans and drivers would better plan their routes if they listened to pianists following the Austrian musician’s scores. Some researchers later suggested that regularly listening to Mozart would result in lasting performance improvements.

These findings gained exaggerated notoriety around the world. You, my dear reader, must have heard that listening to classics makes people smarter. It was from there that this conversation took hold and inspired some questionable measures.

For example, Zell Miller, when governor of the US state of Georgia, planned to deliver recordings of classical songs to every baby born in his state. He was hopeful of forming a whole new generation more capable. The politician did not value a technical detail, the cognitive enhancement after listening to the famous sonata was an exclusive privilege of adults.

But this detail did not cover the magic contained in the Mozart effect. There was evidence that listening to music would improve mental functions unrelated to the ability to interpret or produce sounds. This influence of the beautiful on our nature seemed to uplift the human mind and dispel the assumption that our brain is a mere primate organ.

It sounds too good to be true. Other skeptical researchers set out to test Rauscher’s hypothesis, and found disappointing results. Apparently it is the delight, any delight, and not the music itself, that causes the cognitive improvement. Science is not the craving for beauty, in addition to being very suspicious.

While some scientists disappointed optimistic expectations like Zell Miller’s, others studied the therapeutic impact of music. Thus, the Mozart effect, from a tool to improve intelligence, was turned into a promise against epilepsy.

Some studies point out that listening to music during sleep and wakefulness seems to have an antiepileptic effect. It is interesting that the best results obtained come with the Mozart sonata. This piece beats the effectiveness of contemporary music, the patient’s preferred musical style, Haydn’s works and other compositions by Mozart himself.

Without suspecting it, the precocious artist may have created anticonvulsant music. We know that there are neural networks that, when activated, favor epileptic seizures, but there are others with opposite attributes. Probably, the organization of rhythm and harmonies change activities of these connections in such a way that epilepsy calms down.

There are still doubts about the effect of Mozart against epilepsies. There are many criticisms of research methods that have confirmed this therapeutic benefit. A recent meta-analysis disqualified most of these experiments. But there is already robust data that the sonata reduces the epileptic activity of patients with severe epilepsy. Whether these effects will be sustained for a long time, whether they will have a clinical correlation, we still don’t know, these are questions that have not yet been answered.

Some patients with epilepsy continue to experience seizures even if treated with the appropriate medication. The news that music can help them brings a prospect of inexpensive, risk-free treatment. Mozart’s strength is a charm.



References

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