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We explore a possibility that the 'Mozart effect' points to a fundamental cognitive function of music. Would such an effect of music be due to the hedonicity, a fundamental dimension of mental experience? The present paper explores a recent hypothesis that music helps to tolerate cognitive dissonances and thus enabled accumulation of knowledge and human cultural evolution. We studied whether the influence of music is related to its hedonicity and whether pleasant or unpleasant music would influence scholarly test performance and cognitive dissonance. Specific hypotheses evaluated in this study are that during a test students experience contradictory cognitions that cause cognitive dissonances. If some music helps to tolerate cognitive dissonances, then first, this music should increase the duration during which participants can tolerate stressful conditions while evaluating test choices. Second, this should result in improved performance. These hypotheses are tentatively confirmed in the reported experiments as the agreeable music was correlated with longer duration of tests under stressful conditions and better performance above that under indifferent or unpleasant music. It follows that music likely performs a fundamental cognitive function explaining the origin and evolution of musical ability that have been considered a mystery.

Volume changes in the spleens of hooded seals (Cystophora cristata) and harp seals (Phoca groenlandica) were measured plethysmographically in vitro in response to epinephrine, norepinephrine, isoprenaline, phentolamine, and acetylcholine. Dilated spleens contracted forcefully within 1-3 min of alpha-adrenoceptor activation with 1.0-5.0 micrograms epinephrine/kg body mass, whereas stimulation of beta-adrenoceptors and cholinergic receptors had little effect. The mass of dilated hooded seal spleens corresponded to 2-4% (n = 7) of body mass, with volume (V; ml) relating to body mass (M; kg) as follows: V = 12.0M + 910 (r2 = 0.96, n = 4). Thus the spleen of a 250-kg hooded seal maximally expels 3.9 liters, or 13%, of its estimated total blood volume. Average hematocrit in splenic venous outflow from dilated spleens was 90 +/- 3% (n = 3) in hooded seals and 85% (n = 2) in harp seals. From these data we have estimated that the aerobic diving limit of a 250-kg hooded seal increases only 105 s, at the most, if complete emptying of the spleen occurs during diving, while the corresponding estimate for a 112-kg harp seal is 80 s.

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