The effect of Mozart's K.448 on epilepsy: A systematic literature review and supplementary research on music mechanism.

Abstract

The "Mozart effect" in epilepsy was first identified by Hughes et al. in 1998. In their treatment of 29 (ages 3-47) patients with epilepsy, including children, the patients showed a significant reduction in epileptic activity on the EEG while listening to "Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos K.448" (Hereafter referred to as "Mozart's K.448"), a phenomenon that has come to be known as the "Mozart effect" of epilepsy. For more than 26 years now this unique and valuable finding has attracted increasing attention and research. This review aims to examine and discuss the relevant literature on the "Mozart effect" and to further explore the adjunctive therapeutic effects of the "Mozart effect" in patients with epilepsy. While reviewing the research, we were surprised to find that no one has ever analyzed the unique organization of Mozart's K.448 score based on music theory, and that research on the underlying musical mechanisms of Mozart's K.448 is still stuck on Hughe's "hypotheses" and "computer analyses" from 26 years ago, this is a regrettable research gap. Therefore, this paper attempts to fill this gap and analyze the unique organizational structure of Mozart's K448 music score from the perspective of music specialty for the first time. We selected three musical segments from the beginning of the piano performance to the 300-second and 30-second piano scores to analyze the internal structure of Mozart's K.448, our analysis results verify that Hughe's hypothesis that Mozart's k.448 has "periodic repetition" is reasonable, thus supplementing the research on the potential musical mechanism of Mozart effect.