If you ever need a heart transplant, you may want to request
some opera for your recuperation. A study found that mice with
heart transplants who listened to classical music afterwards
survived twice as long as those who listened to pop music. The
study was published in the March 23 issue of the Journal of
Cardiothoracic Surgery. The researchers, led by Masateru
Uchiyama at Juntendo University Hospital in Tokyo, Japan, used
mice who had been given transplants from unrelated donors, which
meant the mice bodies would reject their transplants. They then
listened continuously to either Verdi’s La Traviata, Mozart
concertos, music by Enya or a range of monotones. The La
Traviata listeners survived 26 days, the Mozart listeners
survived 20 days and the Enya-listening group lasted only 11
days. The monotone group were worst off with a seven-day
survival rate. In order to find out whether vibrations or the
actual music itself that was responsible for the difference, the
researchers also subjected deaf music to the va