Can Classical Music Make Your Kids Smarter?

Philip Glass via last.fm

CLASSICAL SPICECan Classical Music Make Your Kids Smarter?

The buzzword, "Mozart Effect", has renewed the interest in classical music and caused educators to take renewed interest in music education. How does classical music affect the brain? Some sources say it has quite an effect. In fact, so much of an effect as to make former Georgia Governor Zell Miller give a free compact disc or cassette tape of classical music to the parents of all babies born in his state's 100 hospitals in 1998. Miller, an avowed country-music lover, is convinced that music can stimulate brain development in young children. "Listening to music at a very early age affects the spatial, temporal reasoning that underlies math, engineering, and even chess," he says. "And having an infant listen to soothing music helps trillions of brain connections to develop."

So, does listening to Mozart Affect Spatial IQ? In a previous well publicized experiment published in 1993, Rauscher and colleagues, of the University of California Irvine, reported that listening to Mozart (compared to relaxation instructions or silence) produced a brief but significant increase in performance of a spatial IQ task. More recently, Rauscher et al have replicated and extended their findings (Neurosci. Letters, 1995, 185, 44-47). In this study, they used the same task as in their first experiment but extended the types of listening experienced. Seventy-nine college students were divided into three groups: silence, Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos, K448, (the same piece that produced the positive results in the 1993 study) and a group that heard a minimalist work by Phillip Glass. Only the Mozart group showed a significant increased spatial IQ score. Rauscher stressed that all classical music that is highly structured and complex has the same effect. "What we think music is doing is stabilizing the neural connections necessary for this kind of spatial-temporal ability," says Ms. Rauscher, who is now an assistant professor of cognitive development at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

In fact, it is now theorized that listening to classical music stimulates the entire brain; the left hemisphere processes information in more sequential, analytical ways the the right hemisphere in more visual, non-linear, and imaginative ways. Anecdotal evidence supports the thesis that the greatest scientists are those who have had extensive exposure to music. It is believed that Einstein, a devoted amateur violinist, was able to understand the deepest implications of his theory of relativity by imagining himself riding a light beam.

Exposure to classical music is an important element of a well-rounded education. Having it in the home is just as important as having it in the schools. And exposing children and adults at any age can be beneficial, as well as enjoyable. Classical music is timeless and reaches across generations with some of the greatest melodies ever written.