The “Mozart Effect”: An Electroencephalographic Analysis Employing the Methods of Induced Event-Related Desynchronization/Synchronization and Event-Related Coherence

Abstract

The event-related responses of 18 individuals were recorded while they were listening to 3 music clips of 6 s duration which were repeated 30 times each. The music clips differed in the level of their complex structure, induced mood, musical tempo and prominent frequency. They were taken from Mozart's sonata (K. 448), and Brahms' Hungarian dance (no. 5). The third clip was a simplified version of the theme taken from Haydn's symphony (no. 94) played by a computer synthesizer. Significant differences in induced event-related desynchronization between the 3 music clips were only observed in the lower-1 alpha band which is related to attentional processes. A similar pattern was observed for the coherence measures. While respondents listened to the Mozart clip, coherence in the lower alpha bands increased more, whereas in the gamma band a less pronounced increase was observed as compared with the Brahms and Haydn clips. The clustering of the three clips based on EEG measures distinguished between the Mozart clip on the one hand, and the Haydn and Brahms clips on the other, even though the Haydn and Brahms clips were at the opposite extremes with regard to the mood they induced in listeners, musical tempo, and complexity of structure. This would suggest that Mozart's music--with no regard to the level of induced mood, musical tempo and complexity--influences the level of arousal. It seems that modulations in the frequency domain of Mozart's sonata have the greatest influence on the reported neurophysiological activity.

Music listening while you learn: No influence of background music on verbal learning

“…Note that negative values indicate a relative decrease in the alpha-band (event-related desynchronization) during the experimental condition compared to the baseline condition, while positive values indicate an increase of alpha-band power during the experimental condition (event-related synchronization). In order to avoid multiple comparisons, event-related synchronization/desynchronization values were averaged over 10 time windows with a duration of 400 ms, and were collapsed for the frontal (FP1, FP2, F7, F3, Fz, F4 and F8), central-temporal (T7, C3, Cz, C4 and T8), and parieto-occipital (P7, P3, Pz, P4, P8, O1, Oz and O2) electrode locations [75] (see also Figure 2). Taken together, we obtained a time course of event-related synchronization/desynchronization changes over three different cortical regions (frontal, central-temporal, parieto-occipital), and over a time course of 4000 ms after stimulus presentation (10 event-related synchronization/desynchronization values for the entire time course).…”

The Mozart Effect: A quantitative EEG study

“…The formulated theory is that listening to music may trigger firing of the rear part of the precuneus which may, in turn, benefit performance of a spatial task. Jausovec and Habe (2003) showed how Mozart's music affects the level of excitement in the cerebral areas linked to attentive processes and spatial-temporal tasks. A study (Bodner, Muftuler, Nalcioglu, & Shaw, 2001) based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) highlighted how listening to K448 generated activation also with regard to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, occipital cortex and cerebellum, all of which are involved in spatial-temporal functions.…”

Neural Correlates of Phrase Rhythm: An EEG Study of Bipartite vs. Rondo Sonata Form

“…5 (BHD), and a simplified version of the theme taken from Haydn’s symphony no. 94 played by a computer synthesizer (HS), of 6-s duration, which were repeated in random succession 30 times each, were analyzed, and the conclusion was that the power spectra revealed a significant difference only in the lower −1 alpha band (7.17–9.16 Hz) (Jausovec and Habe, 2003). Again, the alpha band reveals to be discriminant in all these studies, as in our experiment.…”