Rationale:
Despite decades of research, a third of epileptic patients don’t respond to anti-seizure medications (Dalic & Cook, 2016). However, a new adjunct treatment utilizing the Mozart Effect (ME) shows promise, as Mozart’s music, primarily K. 448, reduces epileptic symptoms (Coppola et al., 2018). Despite its potential, few studies have explored the musical aspects of the ME. These studies suggest the therapeutic effect is correlated to periodicity (10-60 seconds) in the amplitude envelope (AE) (Ding et al., 2023; Hughes, 2001) and changes in harmonic spectral composition (Štillová et al., 2021), also known as spectral flux (SFL) (Pikrakis, 2014). While not ME-focused, studies have shown that strong neural activity in the fronto-central region is correlated to musical periodicity present in the AE and SFL by using scalp electroencephalograms (EEG) via temporal response functions and reliable components analysis (Kaneshiro et al., 2020; Weineck et al., 2022). We aim to verify Mozart’s periodicity claims and apply the analysis to non-effective music.
Methods:
The periodicity T0 and jitter σj of features were extracted to find differences between music that has replicated the ME (Coppola et al., 2018) and those that didn’t (Ding et al., 2023; Quon et al., 2021) (see Table 1). The AE utilized a root-mean-square approach while the SFL tracked changes in frequency content. Jitter ranked how periodic a musical feature was by using T0 to locate the deviation of spacings between the peaks of a feature. In other words, low σj implies a steady signal. While this approach is novel in ME research, it’s frequently utilized in audio research.
Results:
Our results showed that music periodicity linked to anti-epileptic symptoms (Mozart’s K. 448, K. 096, K. 207, K. 218, K. 314, K. 482, and K. 551) differed from music which failed to replicate the ME. Mozart’s music contained periodicities within 10-60 seconds for both AE and SFL (Table 1), supporting the findings of (Ding et al., 2023; Hughes, 2001; Štillová et al., 2021). Also, Mozart’s works had some of the lowest σj values of the music set. To visualize these results, the features of K. 448 were plotted and compared to those of K. 551, Lohengrin, and Jugulator (Figure 1). The AE is converted to the decibel scale to better estimate auditory perception (Ziemer et al., 2021). Note the stable periodicity present between the AE and SFL of Mozart’s K. 448 and K. 551, evidently absent in Lohengrin or Jugulator. Lastly, the range of Mozart features was consistent, while those of Lohengrin and Jugulator were unstable. Conclusions:
Our findings show that Mozart’s music exhibits 10-60 second periodicity in both the AE and SFL along with low jitter values, distinguishing it from ineffective music. We suggest periodic features are core to the ME and that these findings can be used in the creation of synthetic music to replicate and improve antiepileptic effects
Funding:
This work was partially supported by NEUSTAR awards by the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Kentucky.