Health Benefits In Listening To Mozart

There are health benefits in listening to Mozart. Most of Mozart’s pieces are now confirmed by scientists to have beneficial health effects on the brain and to the whole body in general.

Some studies showed that listening to Mozart can help epileptics. Seizures were significantly reduced after listening to a Mozart piece for 45 minutes a day.

This “Mozart effect” is also said to enhance fetal development, improve mathematical skills, learning, and increase the spatial IQ. It was also noted that listening to Mozart reduces stress, and arthritic pains, and improves eyesight.

The original research on Mozart-effect looked at how the K448 piano sonata affects the spatial IQ of a person. Volunteers were instructed to visualize correctly the unfolded shape of a piece of paper that had been folded many times. It was found out that those who listened to Mozart had a performance quantified to be equivalent to an increase of eight to nine points in IQ.

It is theorized that this improvement in performance is due to the stimulation and warming up of the areas in the brain that are involved in the processing of music by those concerned with spatial perception.

Neurologists found out that a child with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy, had fewer seizures when exposed to Mozart’s K448 piano sonata for 10 minutes every hour. Another study found changes in brain activity in 23 out of 29 cases when Mozart was played.

According to Dr John Hughes of the University of Illinois, this Mozart effect may be similar to pulsating electrical stimulation, that brings order to malfunctioning nerve cells in the brain. Mozart’s music is brilliantly complex, and highly organized, and the cerebral cortex seem to resonate with Mozart’s music to normalize any of its sub-optimal functioning.

Part of Mozart’s genius is his repetition of themes in a way that is not boring, but instead is engaging to the listener. He repeats a theme not necessarily with the same but different notes and at the same interval. This technique in musical composition is only unique in Mozart.

These repetition and periodic changes are also found in all brain and bodily functions. It is this repetition that acts like repetitive electrical stimulation that creates the Mozart effect.

Researchers simulated this electrical stimulation by implanting electrodes in epileptic patients, and found out a 95 percent reduction in seizures. Researches are being conducted to verify the same effect in listening to Mozart.

Mozart soothes the beating heart. A study on the effects of music on heart-rate variability showed that listening to music may be helpful in heart diseases. The study showed that listening to Mozart or Bach lowered the heart rate and its variability.

Listening to Mozart may ease stress in newborn babies. Mozart was played to newborn babies to help them get over the trauma of birth, and doctors are running clinical trials to ascertain whether Mozart’s music can reduce stress, heart rate and motor activity in premature babies.

These are some of the many health benefits that can be derived from listening to Mozart. Besides the health benefits stated above. Mozart music is also beneficial to plants and animals. Plants grow taller, and bear more fruits when Mozart music is played on them. Orchids and other flowering plants bloom faster, and aquarium fish become happy and lively when exposed to Mozart music.