EpiMuse

Understanding the Science

Epilepsy is a chronic disease of the brain which affects roughly 50 million people worldwide, 80% of whom live in low- and middle-income countries. In cases where patients of epilepsy either cannot afford proper treatment or do not respond to anti-epileptic drugs – or in cases consisting of a combination of both – alternative epilepsy treatments systems can be pursued. One such method is the use of classical music as a form of epilepsy therapy.

Brainwaves can be altered by various external stimuli, such as auditory stimuli and music. Indeed, the ‘Mozart Effect’, first coined in the paper titled ‘Music and Spatial Task Performance’ by Rauscher et al., describes how listening to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K.448 improved the short-term spatial reasoning skills of college students. The study subsequently sparked significant amounts of further research and public interest, leading to the popularization of the idea that listening to Mozart’s music can enhance cognitive functions. In recent years, Quon et al. investigated the effect of Mozart’s music on the brain activity of epileptic patients; the conclusion was that Mozart’s Sonata K.448 can be used as a ‘non-invasive, non-pharmalogical intervention’ for patients of refractory epilepsy, due to reduced intracranial interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) and increased frontal theta power in the subjects tested.

Whilst there has been extensive research on investigating and validating the ‘Mozart Effect’, few studies have focused on using the ‘Mozart Effect’ to design music therapy for patients of brain disorders. EpiMuse offers a unique solution which leverages machine-learning and brain-computer-interface tools to offer novel system of “customized music therapy for epileptic patients”, specifically for patients of refractory epilepsy and/or patients unable to afford common treatments.