Can music alleviate cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia?

It has recently been reported that students performed relatively better on cognitive tasks after listening to music. Conceivably, music might reduce t he level of arousal in subjects who are tense, thereby improving their perf ormance, A test case would be schizophrenic subjects, noted for poor perfor mance on tasks demanding attention, who have been characterized as sufferin g from hyperarousal, which mediates these attentional deficits. We investig ated whether cognitive task performance could be facilitated by music in sc hizophrenics and report a beneficial effect. Copyright (C) 2000 S. Karger A G, Basel.