Comparing The Effects of Brain Exercise to Listening to Mozart in Improving Short Term Memory

Background: Doing a brain exercise or listening to Mozart are believed to improve short term memory. We examined whether these methods may differently improve the cognitive function. Methods: We conducted an experiment with pre-test and post-test involving two groups of 24 subjects each. The first group had a brain exercise and the second group listened to Mozart. Both groups had the treatment for four weeks, four times a week. The pre-test and post-test were a digit span test. The test scores were compared within the group and between the two groups. Result: The results indicated brain exercise and listening to Mozart improving the short term memory (p<0.05). However, the improvement was not significantly different between the two methods (p>0.05). Conclusion: One method showed no superiority against another in improving short term memory. Keywords: Brain exercise, Mozart, Short term memory, digit span test.