• Patrizia D'Alessandro, Marta Giuglietti, Antonella Baglioni, Norma Verdolini, Nicola Murgia, Massimo Piccirilli, and Sandro Elisei.
• Istituto Serafico, via G. Marconi 6, 06081 Assisi, Perugia, Italy, sandroelisei@serafico.it.
• Psychiat Danub. 2017 Sep 1; 29 (Suppl 3): 399-404.

BackgroundApproximately one-third of patients with epilepsy continue to experience seizures despite adequate therapy with antiepileptic drugs. Drug-resistant epilepsy is even more frequent in subjects with intellectual disability. As a result, several non-pharmacological interventions have been proposed to improve quality of life in patients with intellectual disability and drug-resistant epilepsy. A number of studies have demonstrated that music can be effective at reducing seizures and epileptiform discharges. In particular, Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D major, K448, has been shown to decrease interictal EEG discharges and recurrence of clinical seizures in patients with intellectual disability and drug-resistant epilepsy as well. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of Mozart's music on seizure frequency in institutionalized epileptic subjects with profound/severe intellectual disability.Subjects And MethodsTwelve patients (10 males and 2 females) with a mean age of 21.6 years were randomly assigned to two groups in a cross-over design; they listened to Mozart K448 once a day for six months.ResultsA statistically significant difference was observed between the listening period and both baseline and control periods. During the music period, none of the patients worsened in seizure frequency; one patient was seizure-free, five had a greater than 50% reduction in seizure frequency and the remaining showed minimal (N=2) or no difference (N=4). The average seizure reduction compared to the baseline was 20.5%. Our results are discussed in relation to data in the literature considering differences in protocol investigation.ConclusionsMusic may be considered a useful approach as add-on therapy in some subjects with profound intellectual disability and drug-resistant epilepsy and can provide a new option for clinicians to consider, but further large sample, multicenter studies are needed to better understand the characteristics of responders and non-responders to this type of non-pharmacological intervention.

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