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Chopin Tunes Music to Babies' Ears
April 29, 2001 (Baltimore) -- If a crying baby is keeping you up at night, and nothing seems to calm the child, modern science is suggesting a 19th-century remedy. South Korean researchers have found that playing the nocturnes of Frederic Chopin has a sleep-inducing effect on restless infants.
"Soothing music has the effect to reduce stress," says Son Moon Shin, MD, chairman of the pediatrics department at Sungkyunkwan University of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea. His findings were presented here today at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies' Annual Meeting.
Son, whose wife and daughter play the piano and violin, respectively, says previous studies have shown that music can generate a relaxation response.
However, that's not always the case says Eliasar Simon, MD, from the pediatrics department of the New Jersey Medical School, in Newark -- who is a believer in the hypnotic power of melody, but within limits.
"Exposing babies to music doesn't [impose] any risk, except if you expose babies to heavy metal or rap," Simon tells WebMD.
Son's study involved comparing 20 healthy newborns in a hospital nursery to a similar group of infants who had been exposed to CD recordings of 13 of Chopin's nocturnes in high-tech cribs called isolettes. Careful observations of the newborns were made during one-hour periods starting from their first day of life and included such measures as heart rate and oxygen level in the blood.
The amount of time it took the babies to fall asleep and the duration of the slumber were also noted.
During the three-day study period, the researchers found some striking differences between the two groups of babies. For instance, the Chopin babies took about 9 minutes to doze off, whereas the music-deprived babies took, on average, 21 minutes.
Furthermore, Son says, the soothing music of Chopin seemed to have a "protective effect" when played in noisy environments.
Blood-oxygen levels were also higher in the Chopin-exposed infants, although the heart rates between the two groups were about the same.
For parents, perhaps the most significant finding was that crying time was about one minute shorter in the music group. Other pluses for Chopin exposure included fewer behavioral changes and more robustness.
"Decreased behavioral changes and longer sleeping time might cause less energy expenditure and reduce initial weight loss," writes Son.
One doctor at the meeting suggested that the term "nocturne" -- from the Latin for something pertaining to the nighttime -- is indeed appropriate for these sleep-inducing compositions by Chopin.
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