Can Music Calm a Shift Workers Soul? In this week’s Boston Globe, there was an article about a surgeon, Dr. Claudius Conrad, of Massachusetts General Hospital, who is scientifically testing how music affects surgeons and their patients. Dr. Conrad’s goal is to determine whether music can improve results of surgery and whether it might be used as a medical treatment. What Dr. Conrad is doing is trying to better, is understand why, and how, music works. In a small study published in 2007, Dr. Conrad tested the effects of music on a group of 10 critically ill patients. Half of the group listened to the slow movements of Mozart piano sonatas through headphones for an hour, and the other half heard no music. Those who listened to music needed less sedation, had reduced stress hormone levels, lower blood pressure and lower heart rates. In a study of surgeons’ reactions to music, to test the effects of music in the operating room, Dr. Conrad created tasks for surgeons to complete on a compute