More evidence for a ‘Mozart effect’ on the epileptic brain

Reuters Health - 21/06/2021 - Listening to Mozart's piano music improves epilepsy by reducing epileptiform discharges, according to new research.

There was a "clear decrease in epileptic spikes while listening to Mozart," Dr. Ivan Rektor of the Epilepsy Centre at the Hospital St Anne and CEITEC Masaryk University, in Brno, Czech Republic, said at the virtual annual meeting of the European Academy of Neurology, where he presented the findings.

Over the long term, listening to or playing music can produce new pathways in the brain, which might change a patient's epilepsy patterns, he explained.

A recent meta-analysis of 12 publications reported an overall reduction in the number of epileptic discharges while listening to Mozart's music in 84% of patients. But music therapy for refractory epilepsy remains controversial and further research is needed.

Dr. Rektor and colleagues compared the effects of listening to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos K448 - the most-studied piece of music as a treatment for epilepsy - with Haydn's Symphony No 94. The music's effects on brain activity were measured by electrodes that had been implanted in the brains of nine men and nine women with epilepsy prior to surgery.

Listening to Mozart and listening to Haydn had markedly different effects on the brain, Dr. Rektor said.

In the overall study population, listening to Mozart led to a 32% decrease in epileptiform discharges, while listening to Haydn's No. 94 led to a 45% increase.

When looking at men and women separately, listening to Mozart suppressed epileptiform discharges in both men and women, while listening to Haydn's music did so only in women; in men, Haydn's music enhanced epileptiform discharges.

"The effect of music on epileptic discharges is determined by the acoustic characteristics of the composition, such as rhythm, dynamics and tone, and there are slight differences between men and women," Dr. Rektor told the conference.

Additionally, he said the findings do not support the hypothesis that the Mozart effect in epilepsy is connected to the emotional effects of music.

The reduction in epileptic discharges was larger in the lateral temporal lobe, a part of the brain involved in processing acoustic signals, rather than in the mesiotemporal limbic region, which plays a role in the emotional response to music, Dr. Rektor explained.

"The effects of listening to music on epilepsy cannot be explained by the effect of dopamine released by the reward system. Our patients were not music connoisseurs and said they were emotionally indifferent to the two pieces of music. There was, therefore, no reason to believe that K448 evoked more pleasure than No. 94," he added in a conference statement.

With more research, Dr. Rektor said it may be possible to develop individualized music therapies to prevent and control epileptic seizures.

"Based on our research, we suggest studying the use of musical pieces with well-defined acoustic properties as a non-invasive method to reduce epileptic activity in patients with epilepsy," Dr. Rektor said.

SOURCE: https://www.ean.org/congress2021 7th Congress of the European Academy of Neurology, held June 19-22, 2021.

By Reuters Staff



Posted on 21 June, 202128 June, 2021