MICE AND MEN

MICE AND MEN
In an article entitled Jarring Music Takes Toll on Mice, in the April 4, 1988 edition of Insight magazine, an experiment related to music and learning is performed on mice. Two researchers, Gervasia Schrenckenberg, a neurobiologist at Georgian Court College, Lakewood, N.J., and Harvey H. Bird, a physicist at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford, N.J., set out to determine the effects of music and rhythm on the nervous system of white mice. One group of mice listened for eight weeks to Strauss waltzes, highly organized and orderly music, while a second heard disharmonic sounds in the form of incessant, or ostinato drumbeats. A third group was raised in silence. Then the three groups were put through the standard maze. The group subjected to disharmonic ostinato rhythm “took much longer to find the food than the others. They were wandering off with no sense of direction” The mice were left alone for three weeks, then the test was readministered. The ostinato group did very poorly, finding that “these mice could not remember how to get to their food, while the others found it quickly with no problem.” The ostinato group “took much longer to run the maze, groped around, seemed disoriented in trying to find where the food was. They took much longer time than initially.” Being concerned about these results, Schreckenberg examined the brain tissue of the mice, looking for changes in the hippocampus, located near the brain stem which is associated with alertness, memory and learning. She discovered abnormal “branching and sprouting” of the neurons as well as disturbances in the RNA, a chemical essential in the storage of memories. Her diagnosis is very interesting: “We believe that the mice were trying to compensate for this constant bombardment of disharmonic noise. They were struggling against the chaos. If more connections among the neurons had been made, it would have been a good thing. But instead there were no more connections, just wild growth of the neurons.” All cellular function within living organisms have unique rhythmic properties. When that rhythm is reinforced by orderly sympathetic vibratory rhythms there appears to be improved health and cognitive activity. On the other hand, rhythmic vibrations that bombard the system in an incessant, ostinato fashion, are counterproductive to both. The alarming part of this study, is that ostinato rhythms is the most salient element to describe a large segment of popular music of the 90's.