Does hearing music cause you to be more intelligent? If you master the performance of a musical instrument will your brain size increase? Does really make you smarter? Inquiries similar to this have been exploding everywhere during the past several years, not only in scientific journals.
Currently, the media has been very interested by the studies about brain development and music, ready to broadcast about the most recent research, making the parents of young children who adore music very happy. All of these details, and some incorrect information, has caused a lot of uncertainty about what music does and if music lessons help the brain function better. It all comes down to this: Many people find that the studies relating music and the brain are befuddling.
Partially, this is because of the way that the words “The Mozart Effect” was made popular by the media and ended up being used as a synonym for any condition that music has a positive influence on cognition or behavior. As a matter of fact, the Mozart Effect is based on a study done in 1993 by Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky, which was printed in the renowned journal “Nature.” The scientists discovered that 36 students in college who tuned into 10 minutes of a Mozart composition had a better score on a spatial-temporal assignment than if they had heard calming techniques or did not hear anything at all.
An enchanted media described this fascinating study as “Mozart makes you smarter” which is an exaggeration of the first results. But there is very little doubt that or other musical instruction benefits the student in many different ways. As Rauscher describes in a later article, the Mozart Effect was researched with just adults, with just several minutes duration and spatial temporal reasoning were the only concept that was analyzed. Since all the findings have surfaced, the industry has come out with books, CD’s, and many websites stating that listening the Classical music will help make children more intelligent.
Since science has opposing views, as well as being confused about the Mozart Effect, this has caused parents to be unsure about what to believe. Parents wonder: should my kids really bother with learning music? The answer to this is yes, because many research studies have proven that music contributes unequivocally to the positive growth in the human brain. More researchers have experimented again and come to the same conclusion the original researchers did in 1993 – that if you listen to Mozart it increases your spatial understanding.
More studies done in 1994 by Rauscher and her associates revealed that following eight months of keyboard training, nursery school age children showed a 46% increase in their spatial reasoning IQ, an ability that is crucial for specific kinds of mathematical analysis. So the bottom line is this: practicing and does indeed help in brain growth in many important ways. Anyway, if you love music, you don’t have anything to worry about if you try, and a lot of benefits to gain.