Mozart’s music impacts our microbiome and mood

Amazingly, research suggests that music affects our microbes as well as our mood.

Music is a salve for the psyche. Music therapy to soothe the soul is likely as old as music itself. Aristotle said that music represents the passions of the soul. Socrates said that good harmony and rhythm accompany a good disposition.

In the early 1800s, psychiatrist Benjamin Rush started using music to treat psychic diseases. The 1900s saw the beginning of several music therapy associations creating standards for education and clinical training.

Music affects our brain chemistry, releasing dopamine and reining in cortisol, the stress hormone. It has found applications in a wide variety of conditions, including dementia, stroke, autism, depression, anxiety, and pain. It is a cross-cultural phenomenon. As Longfellow put it, “Music is the universal language of mankind.”

How Does Music Affect Our Microbiome?

A Chinese study with mice found that playing music led to higher levels of Lactobacillus in their gut, which increased the acidity enough to deter Salmonella infections. They did not play classical Chinese music or C-pop. Instead, they chose the Flute Quartet in D Major by Mozart.

Another Chinese study with mice found that playing dinner music while the mice ate also boosted beneficial bacteria like Lactobacillus and reduced pathogenic bacteria. A third Chinese study, again with mice, compared music to white noise and found that while music improved the microbiome, white noise was detrimental. The music they selected was the Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, again by Mozart.

Why Mozart?

It all started with a study done in the 1990s that found certain spatial reasoning abilities were enhanced by his music. This is the “Mozart Effect” that was touted to increase IQ and enhance memory. That led to claims that the Mozart Effect even raised the IQs of babies in the womb.

Why Study How Music Affects Mice?

These are the kinds of studies that certain politicians love to ridicule. Why are they playing Mozart for mice?

But these studies have big money behind them in service of a larger goal: They aim to see if music can help farm animals gain more weight. Music may also help cows produce more milk. Playing music is cheaper than feeding antibiotics (which also encourages weight gain), and doesn’t lead to antibiotic resistance.

Regardless of their intention, these studies found that slow, simple, and sweet music helped animals gain weight, even in a noisy environment. It seems to calm them down, lowering stress and hushing the immune system.

Another interesting finding is that rock music has the opposite effect, increasing stress and making animals lose weight. That’s not unreasonable: rock is designed to be as far from soothing as possible. It is often dark and psychotic, and passes those harmful emotions on to the listener.

There are yet to be any good studies about music and the human gut microbiome. However, a recent small Spanish study looked at music and mouth microbes. The researchers examined people with age-related cognitive disorders as well as healthy controls to see if music altered their oral microbiome.

They found that music reduced the burden of pathogens in both groups. In particular, those with cognitive disorders had lowered levels of Veillonella and Porphyromonas, microbes associated with Alzheimer’s and neuroinflammation. The music included arrangements by Vivaldi, Strauss, and, of course, Mozart.

What’s Going On?

Music is known to lower stress and dampen the immune response, which improves mood and cognition. Via the gut-brain axis, this could be affecting gut microbes.

Or, possibly, the microbes are directly affected by the music. An Indian study found that petri dishes full of E. Coli and Staphylococcus were stimulated by music. Also interesting: Those microbes are pathogens.

A sewage plant in Berlin now plays music to help its microbes digest sewage more efficiently. They assert that they save a thousand euros a month by piping music into the plant. The chosen music is The Magic Flute by Mozart, of course.

Whatever music affects first – the brain or the microbiome – may be irrelevant if the end result is health and happiness.

yogaesoteric
January 27, 2026