According to a new study, listening to music like Jazz or Mozart that is relaxing could help treat epileptic seizures. The study has been put forward at the American Psychological Association’s 123rd Annual Convention. It has revealed that epileptics’ brain responds in a different way to this type of music as compared to those who do not suffer from the condition.

As per experts, many cases of epilepsy, approximately 4/5’s, are variant called ‘temporal lobe’ epilepsy. It occurs, when the seizures develop in the temporal lobe of the brain, the region of the brain where the auditory cortex processes the music.

Researchers arranged an experiment that involved 21 epileptic patients who were being treated in Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. The patients were checked with an electroencephalogram, a device that helped analyze brainwave patterns, when electrodes were attached to the scalp when they were listening to music.

In the beginning, the subjects were silent for 10 minutes, after that either Mozart’s “Andante Movement II (K448)”, “Sonata in D Major” or John Coltrane’s rendition of “My Favorite Things” was played. After that, there was another 10 minutes silence, then another of the 2 music pieces, and an ultimate 10 minutes of silence.

According to assistant professor of neurology Dr. Christine Charyton, “We were surprised by the findings. We hypothesized that music would be processed in the brain differently than silence. We did not know if this would be the same or different for people with epilepsy”.