Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University: “A Sonata a Day Keeps the Doctor Away”
Retrieved from: http://www.aftau.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=11369
Summary: Research on premature babies exposed to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart shows remarkable effects on their weight gain and growth. Dr. Dror Mandel and Dr. Ronit Lubetzky of the Tel Aviv Medical Centre affiliated with the Tel Aviv University’s “Sackler School of Medicine” played 30 minutes of Mozart’s music to pre-term infants, once a day, and found that the babies expended less energy – grew faster – when they listened to Mozart than when they were not listening to anything. The researchers measured energy expenditure in the newborns right after listening, and compared it to the measurements of energy expended while the babies were at rest. The babies expended less energy while hearing the music.
Although nothing was proven scientifically, this initial research on the effects of music on preemies is of outmost importance. Doctors’ main goal is to bring the premature babies to a healthy weight before allowing them to go home (a healthy weight denotes a stronger immune system, less risk of illness; also sooner dismissal means less exposure to infections and illnesses found in hospitals). Since music is shown to help the preemies grow faster, shouldn’t music become a standard practice in hospitals to optimize the health and well-being of babies?
It is unknown why the music of Mozart is soothing to the newborns, but Dr. Mandel’s hypothesis is that “the repetitive melodies in Mozart’s music may be affecting the organizational centres of the brain’s cortex.”
Response: Similar to the controversial research labelled as the “Mozart Effect”, this study on premature babies exposed to the music of Mozart show promising effects of classical music on the human brain. If the music of Mozart, which may be melodically repetitive as suggested by Dr. Mandel, but which is also much more complex than meditation music, or the repetitive “pop” music, has a calming effect over babies, nourishing their bodies in miraculous ways, we can conclude that exposure to music, or more so the study of music, will benefit everyone. Whether or not “music makes you smarter”, we can at least undoubtedly conclude that music, classical music that is, has a therapeutic effect. It would be interesting to see what kind of effect other genres of music have on the premature babies and if classical music (and not only the music of Mozart, which is joyful and underlined by a childish innocence and energy) is the genre most beneficial to our brain, why won’t it become a standard subject in schools, for everyone’s benefit? Alongside sports which nourish the body, why won’t we invest in music to nourish our brain?
Retrieved from: http://www.aftau.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=11369
Summary: Research on premature babies exposed to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart shows remarkable effects on their weight gain and growth. Dr. Dror Mandel and Dr. Ronit Lubetzky of the Tel Aviv Medical Centre affiliated with the Tel Aviv University’s “Sackler School of Medicine” played 30 minutes of Mozart’s music to pre-term infants, once a day, and found that the babies expended less energy – grew faster – when they listened to Mozart than when they were not listening to anything. The researchers measured energy expenditure in the newborns right after listening, and compared it to the measurements of energy expended while the babies were at rest. The babies expended less energy while hearing the music.
Although nothing was proven scientifically, this initial research on the effects of music on preemies is of outmost importance. Doctors’ main goal is to bring the premature babies to a healthy weight before allowing them to go home (a healthy weight denotes a stronger immune system, less risk of illness; also sooner dismissal means less exposure to infections and illnesses found in hospitals). Since music is shown to help the preemies grow faster, shouldn’t music become a standard practice in hospitals to optimize the health and well-being of babies?
It is unknown why the music of Mozart is soothing to the newborns, but Dr. Mandel’s hypothesis is that “the repetitive melodies in Mozart’s music may be affecting the organizational centres of the brain’s cortex.”
Response: Similar to the controversial research labelled as the “Mozart Effect”, this study on premature babies exposed to the music of Mozart show promising effects of classical music on the human brain. If the music of Mozart, which may be melodically repetitive as suggested by Dr. Mandel, but which is also much more complex than meditation music, or the repetitive “pop” music, has a calming effect over babies, nourishing their bodies in miraculous ways, we can conclude that exposure to music, or more so the study of music, will benefit everyone. Whether or not “music makes you smarter”, we can at least undoubtedly conclude that music, classical music that is, has a therapeutic effect. It would be interesting to see what kind of effect other genres of music have on the premature babies and if classical music (and not only the music of Mozart, which is joyful and underlined by a childish innocence and energy) is the genre most beneficial to our brain, why won’t it become a standard subject in schools, for everyone’s benefit? Alongside sports which nourish the body, why won’t we invest in music to nourish our brain?
