sarahness

A research from Tel Aviv University finds that premature babies who are exposed to music by 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gain weight faster and become stronger than those who don’t.

The study was conducted by Dr. Dror Mandel and Dr. Ronit Lubetzky of the Tel Aviv Medical Center. They found that pre-term infants exposed to thirty minutes of Mozart’s music in one session, once per day expend less energy — and therefore need fewer calories to grow rapidly — than when they are not “listening” to the music.

“It’s not exactly clear how the music is affecting them, but it makes them calmer and less likely to be agitated,” says Dr. Mendel, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University.

The study was carried out by measuring the physiological effects of music by Mozart played to pre-term newborns for 30 minutes.

“The repetitive melodies in Mozart’s music may be affecting the organizational centers of the brain’s cortex,” Dr. Mendel says.

“Unlike Beethoven, Bach or Bartok, Mozart’s music is composed with a melody that is highly repetitive. This might be the musical explanation. For the scientific one, more investigation is needed,” he continued.

The research is based on a controversial 1993 study showing that college students improved their IQs by listening to a Mozart sonata for 10 minutes.