A new study finds that when someone listen to even just 30 seconds of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music, it can actually prevent seizures in patients that suffer from medication-resistant epilepsy.
In the study, the research group found that Mozart’s composition of Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K 448) could even possibly lessen the electrical activity spikes in the brain associated with epilepsy.
According to the findings of the study, patients that enjoyed listening to Mozart’s classical piece of music were found to have a significant link to their therapeutic effects. Incredibly, the piece – which was written to be played by four hands – was composed back in 1781, and in an early 1990 study, was found to heighten one’s spatial reasoning ability.
The result became known as the Mozart Effect, and was eventually used in a variety of different fields throughout the next few decades, with epilepsy being one of those fields.
For the epilepsy study, the researchers used electroencephalograms on 16 adults that were found to be resistant to epilepsy medication. They were made to listen to a series of 15 or 90 second clips, some of which included Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major.
Participants that listened to K 488 were found to have a 66.5 percent average decrease in their number of epilepsy-associated electrical activity spikes in the brain, which didn’t happen with any of the other music clips they were made to listen to as well.
Moreover, these reductions were also ‘found to the greatest extent in the brain’s left and right frontal cortices,’ which are the parts of the brain that are used to regulate a person’s emotional responses. The study can be found in the Scientific Reports journal.
Notably, Mozart wrote his sonata for two pianos when he was just 25, all for one of his most promising students named Josepha von Auernhammer. She eventually become known as one of the Austria’s number one female performing pianists and composers as well.
If you’d like to hear Mozart’s sonata for yourself, listen to it on the link below.
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