Both young and elderly people can increase their focus and improve their brain performance just by listening to a Mozart minuet, says a study. The findings of the study prove that music plays a vital role in human brain development and it helps to increase one's concentration levels and ignore distractions.
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'Music evolved for helping to overcome the predicament of stress that arises from holding contradictory cognitions so that knowledge is not discarded but rather can be accumulated, and human culture can evolve,' said Professor Nobuo Masataka of Japan's Kyoto University and Dr Leonard Perlovsky of Harvard University, who led the research.
The study included 25 boys, aged between eight and nine and 25 older people aged between 65 and 75. The participants were asked to complete a Stroop task. The Stroop task studies a person's mental performance by asking them to identify the correct color of a word when it is written in a different color.
For this Stroop test, a series of words were flashed on a computer screen. For example, if the word 'red' is written in the color blue the participant's final answer should be 'red'.
The test was conducted three times. The first time, a Mozart minuet played in the background, the second time featured a modified version of the same music with irregular and unpleasant intervals, and for the third time, the test was conducted in complete silence.
The participants were able to identify the true colors quicker with fewer errors when the Mozart minuet was played. Previous studies have established the positive effect of Mozart on the cognitive behavior of patients and researchers call it as the 'Mozart Effect.'
During the second attempt, both the age groups' responses were significantly slower and reported much higher mistakes.
