Of Mice and Mozart

[Guest guest]

In a previous post, I had suggested that my pets most likely did not

appreciate fine music while sitting in the room with me while I

enjoyed the unfolding of the piece being played. I suggested that

there was a corallary with our looking at the ascetic lives of

mystics and missing the point of their actions. Perhaps there was a

blissful experience that was being afforded to them that superceded

any and all physical discomfort that we witnessed, much like our

sitting and enjoying good music may appear boring and a suffering

kind of thing in the minds of our pets if they were to have anything

in the nature of thought within themselves. Mayhaps that was a bad

comparison. What follows is a report in World Science:

 

Do mice succumb to Mozart?

 

March 25, 2006

Special to World Science

 

The idea is at least as controversial today as it was when an

attention-grabbing 1993 study suggested it: listening to Mozart makes

you smarter, at least temporarily.

 

Some researchers say the notion is outright debunked by now, though

that hasn't shut down a booming industry in Mozart CDs marketed as

brain-boosters.

 

Into this mess, a set of even more startling findings has crashed

through the door.

 

Few if any people would claim rodents appreciate classical music, yet

studies from three laboratories have found this much: Mozart does

something for them.

 

The research found that a Mozart sonata improves maze performance in

rats and mice. Some findings also pointed to accompanying biochemical

changes.

 

The studies have given a confidence boost to longtime proponents of

the so-called " Mozart effect, " who say the agreement of

three " independent " studies starts to approach something that could

be called rock-solid evidence. But with skeptics continuing to

dispute the results, the only certainty is that the debate isn't over.

 

Doubters point out that among other problems, rats and mice can't

even hear much of Mozart's music. The pitches are too low for

them. " It's important to approach these studies with a critical eye

and not be dazzled by the big claims being made, " wrote Harvard

University's Christopher Chabris in an email.

 

The 1993 study with humans reported that listening to 10 minutes of

Mozart boosted college students' " spatial reasoning " abilities on

tests for the next 10 to 15 minutes.

 

Attempts to replicate the finding gave mixed results. Chabris

analyzed 16 studies and in 1999 concluded there was no " Mozart

effect, " except possibly an improvement on one test involving ability

to transform visual images, with even that result falling short of

statistical significance.

 

Chabris attributed any effect to " enjoyment arousal " in his analysis,

published in the Aug. 26, 1999 issue of Nature, the same research

journal that published the original finding. His work led to

responses and counter-responses, along with contentions that

the " Mozart effect " might last longer than originally reported.

 

As the debate raged, seeds of an even stranger finding had begun to

sprout.

 

In the July 1998 issue of the journal Neurological Research, Frances

Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, and colleagues

reported a study in which rats were exposed to Mozart while in the

womb and for 60 days after birth.

 

The rats completed a maze faster and with fewer errors than rats

exposed instead to simpler music, silence, or a static-like noise,

according to Rauscher, who had led the original study in humans.

 

Chabris and others disputed that report, too. But two more studies

with similar results have appeared in scientific journals in recent

months: one in the December 2005 Neurological Research and the other

in the latest issue of Behavioural Brain Research, dated May 15.

 

Both were designed to replicate Rauscher's findings, with some key

differences. The first omitted the in-uterus music exposure. The

second studied mice instead of rats. Both found that the Mozart-

exposed rodents made fewer errors on mazes than others, though only

the first study found that they also completed the mazes faster.

 

" Continuous exposure to music during the perinatal [before-and-after

birth] period enhances learning performance in mice as adults, "

concluded the authors of the second, Sachiko Chikahisa and colleagues

at Tokushima University in Tokushima, Japan.

 

They found the improvement was associated in increased levels of a

molecule associated with " neural plasticity " —a sort of flexibility in

brain circuit wiring, believed to facilitate learning. The molecule,

a protein, is called TrkB.

 

Thus, " at this time I would say there are two independent

replications of my original " finding, wrote Rauscher in an email.

 

But Kenneth M. Steele of Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C.,

a past critic of Mozart-effect findings, said the new studies also

appear flawed. He said Chikahisa's paper exhibits some wrong

statistical techniques and some of the numbers presented suggest

possible selective use of data.

 

Also, the data show the Mozart mice were on average " a little heavier

than the other groups. This may indicate greater maturity, " Steele

wrote in an email. Moreover, " this study suffers from the same flaw

as the Rauscher et al. study: lack of random assignment. The mothers

were randomly assigned to a group. But the assignment of the

offspring was determined by their mother. "

 

While Steele said he hadn't yet read the study in Neurological

Research in full, he suggested its authors might not have been

objective, having supported the Mozart effect previously.

 

A major problem, he said, is that rats can't even hear most of the

notes in the Mozart music played in the studies, and mice may hear

none of them. Both animals' hearing range only covers much higher

pitches than human hearing does. Mice and rats are also born deaf,

Steele added.

 

But Chikahisa and colleagues argued that mice can hear some of the

higher pitches in the music. Also, they wrote, " there are some

studies that music influences behavior, brain function, immunity and

blood pressure in rodents. "

 

Tokushima University's Hiroyoshi Sei, one of the co-authors, said in

an interview that mice might feel vibrations of music without hearing

notes.

 

Peter Aoun and colleagues at the MIND Institute of Costa Mesa,

Calif., authors of the Neurological Research study, wrote that

rodents needn't enjoy the music for it to have an effect. Some

researchers have argued that certain music may produce benefits

simply by stimulating natural patterns of brain activity.

 

Sei said that to clarify such questions, he's testing the effect of

music on totally deaf mice.

 

He's not sure, he added, what about the music may have influenced the

rodents. But " it definitely something affects something in their

behavior, " he said.

 

posted by bob