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Listening to just 30 seconds of Mozart can prevent seizures

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By Joe Morgan via SWNS

Listening to just 30 seconds of Mozart calms areas of the brain and can prevent seizures in people with medication-resistant epilepsy, reveals a new study.

Researchers found the Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K 448) might have the power to reduce the epilepsy-associated electrical activity spikes in the brain.

People who enjoyed the piece of classical music were noted to have substantial increases to its therapeutic effects, the study revealed.

The sonata, Four Hands, written in 1781, first came to the fore in the early 1990s when a study found listening to it led to an increase in spatial reasoning ability.

This result, which became known as the Mozart Effect, was studied in a range of fields over the past decades - including epilepsy.

In this study, the researchers used electroencephalograms on 16 adults with medication-resistant epilepsy as they listened to a series of 15 or 90-second clips - including the Mozart piece.

(Photo by cottonbro via Pexels)

Listening to K 448, but not any other music clip, was linked with a 66.5 percent average reduction in the number of epilepsy-associated electrical activity spikes throughout the brain.

These reductions were found to be the greatest in the brain's left and right frontal cortices, parts of the brain involved in regulating emotional responses.

According to a study cited by the CDC there are about 3.4 million people with epilepsy in the US:  Three million adults and 470,000 children.

"Listening to K 448 for as little as 30 seconds may activate networks within the brain that are associated with positive emotional responses to music and are regulated by the frontal cortex," said Robert Quon, a Ph.D. student at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. "The activation of these networks may contribute to reductions in epilepsy-associated electrical activity spikes among those with medication-resistant epilepsy."

Mozart's sole sonata for two pianos was written at the age of 25 for Josepha von Auernhammer - one of his most promising students - who went on to become one of Austria's leading female performing pianists and composers.

The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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