| Health |
| •
A natural pacemaker, the human heart responds to musical
variables such as rhythm and tempo, tending to speed
up or slow down to match a song. Listening to certain
music has been shown to reduce heart rate by 4 to 5
beats per minute. In a recent study of eighty heart
patients at a Dallas hospital, music and relaxation
therapy was effective in lowering mean heart rate from
100 to 82 beats per minute and systolic blood pressure
from 150 to 130 mg/Hg. |
| •
In a California State University study, chronic migraine
sufferers trained in the use of music, imagery, and
relaxation techniques in two half-hour sessions per
week for five weeks reported 83% fewer headaches over
the following year - as well as a reduction in the intensity
and duration of episodes. |
| •
Dr. Paul Robertson, visiting professor of music and
psychiatry at Kingston University in Ontario, Canada,
cites studies showing that patients exposed to fifteen
minutes of soothing music require only 50% of recommended
doses of sedatives and anesthetic drugs for often very
painful operations. |
| •
At Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, patients in critical
care units listen to classical music. "half an
hour of music produced the same effect as ten milligrams
of Valium", Dr. Raymond Bahr, director of the coronary
care unit, reports. |
| Babies
& Children |
| •
Hospitals and maternity clinics that offer music therapy
report fewer complications, fewer Cesarean sections,
shorter average labor times, and shorter hospital stays
for their patients. Women who practice toning techniques
during labor and delivery describe the experience as
calming, as a way to stay centered during a time of
deep personal change. |
|
• At Helen Keller Hospital in Alabama, an experiment
with fifty-nine newborns found that 94% of crying babies
immediately fell asleep without a bottle or pacifier
when exposed to music. |
| •
In a study of fifty-two premature babies and newborns
with low birth weight at the Tallahassee Memorial Regional
Medical Center in Tallahassee, Florida, a researcher
reported that playing sixty-minute tapes of vocal music,
including lullabies and childrenÍs songs, reduced hospital
stay an average of five days. Mean weight loss of babies
was also about 50% lower for the group of babies listening
to music, formula intake was less, and stress levels
were reduced. |
| Education |
| •
Designers, decorators, landscapers, pilots, golfers,
and others attuned to visual cues in their work rely
on what Howard Gardner, a professor of education at
HarvardÍs Graduate School of Education, has christened
"spatial intelligence". Researchers at the
University of California at Irvine discovered that listening
to Mozart's "Sonata for two Pianos" (K.448)
could boost these abilities. |
|
• The College Entrance Examination Board reported
in 1996 that students with experience in musical performance
scored 51 points higher on the verbal part of the SAT
and 39 points higher on the math section than the national
average. "Study in music and the other arts generally
seems to have a cumulative effect and is undeniably
correlated with improvement over time in students' standardized
test scores," concluded Edward J. Kvet, director
of the School of Music at Central Michigan University
in Mount Pleasant. |
| •
In a comprehensive review of hundreds of empirically
based studies between 1972 and 1992, three educators
associated with the Future of Music Project found that
music instruction aids reading, language (including
foreign language), mathematics, and overall academic
achievement. The investigators also found that music
enhances creativity, improves student self-esteem, develops
social skills, and increases perceptual motor skill
development and psychomotor development. |
| Business |
| •
"The very best engineers and technical designers
in the Silicon Valley industry are nearly without exception,
practicing musicians." - Grant Venerable, The Center
for the Arts in Basic Curriculum, New York, 1989. |
|
• The University of Washington reported that in
a study of ninety people copy editing a manuscript,
accuracy in the group listening to light classical music
for ninety minutes increased by 21.3%. By contrast,
the skills of those listening to a popular commercial
radio format improved by only 2.4%. |
| •
AT&T; and DuPont have cut training time in half with
creative music programs. Equitable Life Insurance increased
the output of transcribers by 17% after introducing
music to the office for six weeks, and Mississippi Power
and Light raised efficiency in the billing department
by 18.6% after instituting a nine--month office listening
program. |
| Mozart
in the Kitchen! |
| •
In monasteries in Brittany, monks play music to the
animals in their care and have found that cows serenaded
with Mozart give more milk. |
|
• "Beethoven Bread" - set to rise to
Symphony No. 6 for 72 hours - is offered as a specialty
item by a bakery in Nagoya. |
|
• In northern Japan, Ohara Brewery finds that Mozart
makes the best sake. The density of yeast used for brewing
the traditional Japanese rice wine - a measure of quality
- increases by a factor of ten. |
From
The Mozart Effect® by Don Campbell
Avon Books, 1997 |
