- guardian.co.uk,
- Sunday April 1, 2001
Doctors say his music can be more effective at treating epilepsy than pills, whereas pop and minimalist music have no effect. The only other music with similar properties is the warblings of the long-haired, mustachioed Greek-American star Yanni.
The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine will tomorrow say the findings indicate Mozart's music could form a standard part of treatment of epilepsy, and calls for more research.
In the UK, 420,000 people suffer from epilepsy, or one in every 130. Previous studies have shown the impact music can have on healthy brains. Psychologists have claimed playing Mozart can make young children more intelligent, and older children study better. Record shops cash in on this research, selling Mozart CDs with labels saying: 'Your baby needs Mozart'. But now Mozart - in particular his piano sonata K448 - can also tackle actual illness. Twenty-nine patients with severe epilepsy were played Mozart, while their brain waves were measured. Twenty-three showed reduced epileptic activity.
In one male patient, the occurrence of epileptic brainwaves dropped from being present two-thirds of the time to being there only a fifth of the time. Two patients had epileptical brainwaves more than 90 per cent of the time, until the music had been playing for five minutes when it dropped to 50 per cent.
However, most of these patients reverted as soon as the music was stopped. To see if it could have a longer-term effect, an eight-year-old girl was played the Mozart sonata for 10 minutes an hour while she was awake. The number of seizures she had fell from nine in the first four hours of music to one in the last four hours. The next day she had just two seizures in almost eight hours.
Previous studies have suggested the music affects intelligence because of 'enjoyment arousal'. However, many patients were unconscious when played the music. A study on rats showed they also found it easier to complete mazes if they were played Mozart's sonata than if they heard nothing, or minimalist music by Philip Glass.
John Jenkins, professor of endocrinology at the University of London, who wrote the paper 'The Mozart Effect', thinks the music affects electrical impulses in the brain, which get disturbed in epileptics.
The sonata K448 was called 'one of the most profound of all his compositions' by Mozart authority Alfred Einstein. Sonata K488 is also known to be effective, as is a contemporary composition by Yanni.
