{"id":15317,"date":"2021-09-16T11:05:41","date_gmt":"2021-09-16T15:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=15317"},"modified":"2021-09-16T16:53:07","modified_gmt":"2021-09-16T20:53:07","slug":"dartmouth-researchers-examine-the-mozart-k448-effect-in-epilepsy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2021\/dartmouth-researchers-examine-the-mozart-k448-effect-in-epilepsy\/","title":{"rendered":"Dartmouth Researchers Examine the Mozart K448 Effect in Epilepsy"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is growing evidence for the efficacy of music, specifically Mozart\u2019s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K448), at reducing ictal and interictal epileptiform activity. But little is known about the mechanism underlying <\/span>the<\/span> beneficial \u201cMozart K448 effect\u201d says <\/span>a <\/span>paper<\/span> published today in <\/span><\/span>Nature <\/span>Scientific Reports<\/span><\/span>: Musical Components Important for the Mozart K448 Effect in Epilepsy<\/span><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Led by researchers from Geisel School of Medicine<\/span>, Dartmouth<\/span>-<\/span>Hitchcock Medical Center (<\/span>DHMC<\/span>), and <\/span>Dartmouth<\/span> College<\/span>\u2019s <\/span>Bregman Music and Affective Sound Lab<\/span>, this is the first study to systematically evaluate the relationship between musical segment boundaries and spectral power changes related to Mozart\u2019s K448<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/09\/Mozart-K448.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Mozart\u2019s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K448).\u00a0Copyright (C) 2021 Bregman Music and Affective Sound Lab. Used by permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOur work is aimed at trying to engineer music that is antiepileptic and reduces seizures. Identifying the features of music that have an effect on epileptic activity in the brain is a first step,\u201d says Barbara C. Jobst, MD, Dr. med, the Louis and Ruth Frank Professor of Neuroscience at Geisel, and chair of the Department of Neurology and Neurocritical Care and director of the Epilepsy and Cognition Lab (ECoGlab) at Dartmouth-Hitchcock (D-H).<\/p>\n

\u201cRobert Quon, the lead author, worked on the antiepileptic properties of music in the brain as part of his PhD thesis. He has done an outstanding job bringing neurologists, engineers, data scientists, music professors, and musicians together to perform this work,\u201d Jobst added.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Robert Quon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Quon, a PhD candidate in Geisel\u2019s Quantitative Biomedical Sciences program<\/a>, says, \u201cThere is a substantial body of research supporting the use of different sensory stimuli to treat various neurological conditions. Preeminent in epilepsy research is the use of Mozart\u2019s K448 for reducing interictal and ictal events.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because its mechanism is unknown, he says their study \u201csought to untangle how auditory stimuli may exert its therapeutic effects, with the dream of creating novel, adjunctive therapies for medically resistant epilepsy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Casey, PhD<\/a>, a professor of music and of computer science at Dartmouth, and one of the investigators, says he likes how this study combined expertise in music analysis with clinical neurology in a deep way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe analyzed the musical structure of Mozart's K448 and the electrical brain response, using both human experts and machine listening algorithms, to determine the effects on the brain of specific musical features. Participants listened to songs selected from a range of musical genres, with acoustic features matching Mozart K448, to replicate the Mozart effect with a more diverse music selection,\u201d Casey explains. \u201cHowever, despite selecting genres to match participants' preferred listening habits, so far only 40-Hz auditory gamma-band tones and Mozart's piano sonata K448 were observed to be effective at reducing interictal epileptiform discharges.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne explanation,\u201d he says, \u201cis that the Mozart sonata has a relatively constant repeated sixteenth-note rhythm (around 128 beats per minute in the recording that we used) that can evoke neural entrainment. Another would be that the classical sonata form is engaging attentional and emotional circuits by setting up and then playing with musical expectations. For these reasons in our search for effective music medicine, we must factor in music-theoretic elements of the selections, such as: tempo, onset density, timbre, key, and musical form.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their research data suggest a strategy for the noninvasive modulation of intracranial interictal epileptiform activity (IED) that, according to the paper, \u201cmay alleviate IED-related comorbidities and support future investigation of other sonatas with similar structural characteristics to Mozart\u2019s K448, as they may hold therapeutic potential for epilepsy.\u201d The research also provides insight into intracranial mechanisms that may be important for the anti-epileptic properties of Mozart\u2019s K448.<\/p>\n

Casey, who conducts research into how sound affects the body and brain, and also creates music for sound therapies and medical interventions, cites French otolaryngologist Alfred Tomatis\u2019 1991 book, Pourquoi Mozart?<\/i>, whose essays on his decades of work using Mozart\u2019s music for the treatment of a range of disorders he thought were connected to the ear\u2014including dyslexia, depression, and severe schizophrenia\u2014says, \u201camazingly, for now, we are left with the same question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quon says he was fortunate to be a part of all aspects of this music study, including the experiment conception and design, data collection and analysis, and manuscript preparation. \u201cI had a lot of help along the way, without which none of this would be possible. Our active collaborations with Professor Michael Casey\u2019s Bregman Music and Affective Sound Lab at Dartmouth and Professor Grace Leslie\u2019s Brain Music Lab at Georgia Tech were instrumental in generating and testing novel hypotheses about how music may be beneficial for epilepsy.\"<\/p>\n

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [Grant Number 05-T32LM012204-03], the Burroughs Wellcome Fund [Grant Number 1014106], the National Science Foundation [Award Number 1632738], and by a Diamond Foundation Research Development Award.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1797, the\u202fGeisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth\u202f<\/b>strives to improve the lives of the communities it serves through excellence in learning, discovery, and healing. The Geisel School of Medicine is renowned for its leadership in medical education, healthcare policy and delivery science, biomedical research, global health, and in creating innovations that improve lives worldwide. As one of America\u2019s leading medical schools, Dartmouth\u2019s Geisel School of Medicine is committed to training new generations of diverse leaders who will help solve our most vexing challenges in healthcare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Mozart? Dartmouth researchers seek mechanisms for the anti-epileptic properties of Mozart\u2019s K448 as a therapeutic potential for epilepsy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":15327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,8],"tags":[1031,1030],"class_list":["post-15317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research","tag-epilepsy","tag-mozart","author-12"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/09\/Mozart_featured.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-3Z3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15317"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15329,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15317\/revisions\/15329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}