There is no doubt that the works of the great classical composers are products of brilliant and creative minds. Could some of this brilliance be transferred to listeners who absorb the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn or Schubert? Can music, in general, improve our mental abilities?
Soon after publication in 1993, the work of Dr. France Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin gained widespread media attention. The idea that simply listening to classical music could make a person smarter put a great deal of focus on music as a cognitive enhancer. A catchy name for the phenomenon – the Mozart effect – helped promote the topic.
The flashy nature of Rauscher’s work even captured the ear of the former governor of Georgia, Zell Miller, who proposed spending $105, 000 per year to ensure that every child in the state have a CD or tape of Mozart to listen to. Unfortunately for classical music retailers everywhere, the validity of this effect is still under heavy debate.
The Mozart effect describes an observed improvement in an individual’s cognitive abilities after briefly listening to a Mozart sonata. The term was initially coined in 1991 by Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis in his book Pourquoi Mozart? Rauscher’s studies concluded that this phenomenon was real and measurable. Failed replications of this experiment, however, did not allow for a solid consensus to be reached.
Dr. William Forde Thompson, UTM professor and president of the World Society for Music Perception and Cognition, explained the response to Rauscher’s original study: “Unfortunately, the media frenzy surrounding the Mozart effect, with its many grandiose claims, left many researchers questioning the scientific credibility of the original findings.”
Nonetheless, interesting facts about the relationship between music and intelligence were unearthed by this work.
Thompson, along with professor Schellenberg, found that the observed increase in cognitive ability described by the Mozart effect was not due to any aspects of the music itself, but instead to the emotional effect that agreeable music has on people’s performance in any task.
“The Mozart effect works not by priming other skills directly; rather, listening to certain types of music can induce positive and energetic affective states that then enhance performance in other non-musical domains.”
In his lab, Thompson documented an improvement in spatial abilities, such as those used in mentally solving visual puzzles, after individuals listened to an energetic piece of music designed to arouse the listener and affect a positive mood. It was previously known that positive mood states are related to an increase of dopamine levels and that arousal increases levels of norepinephrine. Physiologically, these two chemicals and their effect on the brain are thought to be responsible for enhancing the performance of individuals in the various tasks they complete.
With these results in mind, it seems reasonable to suggest that individuals who perform or create music would perform better in certain mental tasks. The results of studies on various school-aged children lend some support to this idea. In one study, high school students were divided into three groups with varying levels of music instruction. After 20 weeks, the group with more music training showed greater achievement in terms of mathematical skills. One study found that preschool children enrolled in a program with music classes had better scores in math tests than children who didn’t have music classes. Along the same lines, children in grade one showed greater achievement in mathematics when they had music included in their academic curriculum.
“Formal instruction in both subject areas involves attention to numbers, repeating patterns and ratios,” said Thompson.
As with interpreting studies on the Mozart effect, caution is necessary when applying the results of Thompson and Schellenberg’s study. Scientists are still investigating alternative explanations for the differences in cognitive ability that Thompson observed. They are split on the idea, owing to the inherent complexity of the human brain. It is possible that the cause of the improvement could be due to a greater natural intelligence in individuals that study music compared to their non-musical counterparts. Conversely, it might be that musical training somehow triggers an improvement in cognitive abilities.
“[These results] provide modest support for a connection between music and mathematics, implying that there may be cognitive operations that are common to the two domains.”
There is also growing evidence that training in music is tied to improvements in other cognitive abilities. Logically enough, music and language may enhance each other, since reading music notation has some similarities with reading words and sentences.
“Given sufficient overlap in the processes involved, training in music even might lead to enhancements in verbal abilities,” Thompson said.
It has been observed that memory for spoken words is enhanced in children who receive musical training. This memory improvement can be understood in the following way: every time someone plays a musical instrument, a large collection of neurons activate in concert with each other. An analogy can be drawn to individual musicians in a symphonic orchestra executing precise and synchronized musical movements together in order to produce a coherent rendition of the musical piece at hand.
Similar to younger children, high school students were reported to have better reading skills if they had previously received musical lessons. In some cases, as few as 15 music lessons were able to produce a dramatic improvement in communication skills, including writing.
In the end, a lack of direct scientific evidence due to poorly controlled experiments means that the advantages of listening to classical music remain uncertain. There may be a positive effect on mental acuity, but much more work needs to be done before this can be definitively proven. The inherent difficulty of experimenting on humans is mostly to blame for this, but the limited knowledge scientists possess about the workings of the brain is also a contributing factor.
In short, don’t trade in your textbooks for North by Northeast passes just yet – there is no good replacement for solid nights of reading and studying. But maybe having your favourite music playing in the background wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
