Factors known to influence memory include stress, attention and emotion. Classical music has been found to reduce a hormone known as cortisone that adds to stress. It is believed this style of music enhances relaxation by freeing the appropriate neurons in the brain.
Baroque period classical music reduces blood pressure at the same time it synchronizes heart beat and pulse rates to the beat of the music, relaxing it in time and keeping the body alert. This allows brain enhanced concentration and influences brain wave amplitude and frequency.
Listening to classical music set to 60 beats per minute (such as Mozart and Baroque period compositions) stimulates both the right and left parts of the brain and allows the listener to be more susceptible to processing information appropriately. Dr. George Lozanov, a psychologist teaching foreign language, used this 60-beats framework to instruct his pupils to the tune of a 92% rate of retaining the material.
Studies have shown that classical music aids memory-building exercises in patients battling Alzheimer`s and dementia. A study in a nursing home had two groups of residents take a name-face recognition test, with only one having a therapist sing and play guitar with them beforehand. The group who joined in the sing-along fared better on the memory test than the other group. A University of California study proved Alzheimer`s patients listening to Mozart had improved memory of patterns and shapes.
One study had subjects broken into three different groups to listen to composer Joseph Hayden, rock band Metallica and white noise while studying a picture. Both stimuli (music and the picture) were removed and the subjects were asked to recall details of the picture. Researchers were surprised to find that those listening to white noise remembered the picture the most accurately while those listening to Hayden`s symphony faltered the most in their recollection. This contradicts previous results on music-memory studies, but the research team admitted that outside noise and communication between subjects was not monitored.
Another study suggests memory improvement may not be in the genre (classical) but in the tempo. A Pennsylvania State University project involved four teams of subjects learning vocabulary lessons along slow classical, slow jazz, fast classical and fast jazz selections. These groups were broken down into small fractions and took a quiz on the lessons while listening either to the same selection or a new one, proving that those who heard the same throughout did better on the quiz. The researchers repeated the experiment with another group of subjects. When split into smaller groups, the subjects listened to a selection either in a new genre or tempo. It was discovered that a changing tempo was what damaged memory retention in the subjects.