Mozart Effect

Listening to music by Mozart enhances our brain activity. After listening to Mozart, the people responsible for a standard IQ-test, showing improving intelligence. 

It is detected by some scientists the phenomenon has been called “Mozart Effect.” From him were immediately made far-reaching conclusions, especially with regard to the upbringing of children, the first three years of his life which were declared to determine their future intelligence. 

This theory has gained such a strong public reaction that CDs of Mozart, with the relevant recommendations of parents, caught in the very beginning of the bestseller list, and the Governor of the U.S. state of Georgia presents Mozart CD every new mother in your state. 

However, the excitement had somewhat subsided after some skeptics have tried to check the “Mozart effect” and do not have the predicted effect. As for children, in his book an authoritative expert on the study of brain and cognition, John Brewer shows that the “myth of the first three years of” life has no reason and the human brain continues to change and learn throughout their lives. 

Nevertheless, an intriguing hypothesis about the influence of music on brain activity not only keeps walking, but in recent years even received a number of compelling new evidence, both subjective and objective. 

What is true that just a lie, and that – statistics? 

For the first time this idea came across more than a decade ago, neurobiologist Gordon Shaw of the University of California (USA) and his graduate student Leng during the first attempts to simulate the brain on the computer. 

It is known that various groups of nerve cells in the brain perform different kinds of mental operations. Shaw and Laing have created a computer model of some of the group “cells” (actually – electronic blocks) and checked to see what would happen if the connection to change the way these “cells” with each other. 

They found that each wiring, that is, each regular “network” formed by the same cells, generates output signals of some form and rhythm. Once they got the idea to convert the output signals into sound. To their great surprise it turned out that all these signals have a musical character that is reminiscent of some music, and more – whenever you change the ways connect the cells in the network nature of this “music” changed: sometimes it was like meditation tunes like “New Age” sometimes – oriental motifs, and even classical music. 

But if the commission of mental operations in the brain has a “musical” nature of thought, Gordon Shaw, there can it be that music, in turn, can influence the thinking activity, stimulating certain neural networks? 

Because these networks are formed in childhood, Shaw decided to use to test your hypothesis works of Mozart, who is known, began composing music at age four. If that can affect the innate neural structure, thought a scientist, then it must be a children’s music of Mozart. 

Gordon Show and his colleague, psychologist Francis Rauscher decided to use to experiment with a standard IQ-test to test whether Mozart’s music to stimulate mind’s ability to manipulate geometric shapes. 

The ability to represent in the imagination of different stereoscopic objects when changing their position in space (eg, turning on its axis) is necessary in a number of exact sciences, for example, in mathematics. 

In 1995, Shaw and Rauscher have published results of the study, which involved 79 college students. Students are asked to respond, what forms can be obtained from a paper napkin, folding it and carving out a different way. 

After the test, students were divided into three groups. Students of the first group 10 minutes sat in complete silence, the second group all the time listening to tape recorded story or recurring primitive music, students of the third group listened to Mozart’s Piano Sonata. 

After this, participants repeated the test. And here are the results. While the first group improved by 14, and the second – by 11 percent, Mozart group correctly predicted 62 per cent more forms than in the first test. 

Another staff member Gordon Shaw, Julian Johnson of the Institute for Aging Brain, University of California, conducted the same test with folding paper and cutting out shapes altshaymerovskih among patients who are often weakened by spatial representation. 

In a preliminary experiment, one of the patients after receiving a ten-minute “dose” of Mozart improved its results in three or four correct answers (out of eight possible). The silence or popular music of the thirties did not give such an effect. 

However, the experiment of Shaw and Rauscher elicited criticism from other researchers. Kenneth Steele, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina (USA), reported that he repeated this test among 125 people, but found no sign of the influence of Mozart on the subjects. 

Another psychologist Christopher Chabris of Harvard, studied the group that contains 714 members. According to him, an analysis of test results also showed no benefit from hearing the music. Chabris suggested that the real cause of the best task in the experiment Show Rauscher was excitement of the pleasure of music by Mozart, but not changes made to it in the nerve networks. In high spirits people work better – as everybody knows. 

On the other hand, some skeptics since become more familiar with the matter have changed their attitude to the effect of Mozart. For example, Louise Hetland of Harvard Teachers College handled the whole amount received to date test results, in the amounts included 1014 people. 

Its results were, naturally, more reliable. She found that students Mozart outpaced other group performed the task more often than could be explained by pure chance. It found its effect was considerably weaker than that of Shaw and Rauscher. But even this small effect, according Hetland, produces a significant impression. 

To test their assumptions Rauscher put a special experiment on rats, which are known not to have an emotional response to music. A group of 30 rats was placed in a room, where for more than two months to 12 consecutive hours rang Mozart Sonata in C. 

It turned out that after the rat ran the maze in an average of 27 percent faster and with less by 37 percent the number of errors than the other 80 rats, which developed among the random noise or silence. According to Rauscher, this experiment confirms the neurological, not emotional effect of Mozart. 

However, Kenneth Steele (who, incidentally, is a specialist training of animals), these data are not persuaded. Rats need to respond to rat squeaks, but not to human music, he said. 

From the perspective of modern evolutionary or psychological theory, there is no reason why the rats’ brains should respond to Mozart as well as human. 

Rauscher agreed that perhaps the music may just provide the experimental rats a stimulating environment. Now she is beginning a new series of experiments in which data are collected to compare the rats, which were planted on hard Mozart’s “diet”, with their brethren in other cells also receive incentives, but in the form of social contact and rat “toys” rather than music. 

Have been received and other evidence of the impact of Mozart’s music on the brain. Neuroscientists from the Medical Center at the University of Illinois (USA), John Hughes conducted an experiment on 36 patients with severe epileptic who suffered from almost constant seizures. 

In the process of monitoring of patients exercises include music by Mozart and compared the EEG of the brain before and during the effects of music. In 29 patients of this group wave brain activity occurring during the attack, becoming weaker and less frequent soon after the inclusion of music. 

“Skeptics may criticize the studies carried out by means of tests IQ, – said Hughes – but the results are objective, they are recorded on paper: you can count the number and amplitude of electrical waves that excite the brain and observe their decline during the hearing of Mozart.” 

It is interesting to note that when, instead of Mozart, the same patients listened to music of some other composers, popular rhythms of the thirties, or complete silence, they have not seen any improvement. 

And this leads to the intriguing question: Why Mozart? Why not Salieri, and not Bach, Chopin and many others? As we mentioned earlier in this article, Gordon Shaw first turned to the music of this composer because that Mozart began to compose his music in early childhood and therefore it can be to their rhythmic properties closer to those processes that occur when a neural network in children brain. But if scientists have not found other, more objective explanation of this strange phenomenon? It turns out that such explanations exist. 

The same Gordon Shaw and his colleague from the Los Angeles office, University of California neurobiologist Mark Bodner used brain scans using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to get a picture of the activity of those parts of the patient’s brain that react to listening to music by Mozart, Beethoven (”Für Elise”) and pop music of the thirties. As expected, all kinds of music stepped up that part of the cortex (the center of hearing), which perceives the vibrations of air caused by sound waves, and sometimes excited part of the brain associated with emotions. 

But Mozart’s music has intensified all regions of the cortex, including those involved in motor coordination, vision and higher processes of consciousness and may play a role in spatial thinking. 

What is the reason for such differences? Some light on this issue may shed studies already mentioned neurologist John Hughes in collaboration with the musicologist. Scientists have analyzed hundreds of musical works by Mozart, Chopin, and 55 other composers. 

The results are presented in tabular form, indicating how often rise and fall with the waves of musical sound volume, continuing 10 seconds or more. The analysis showed that more primitive pop music is at the bottom of the scale, while Mozart is two to three times higher place. 

In anticipation of Hughes, the strongest reaction in the brain should result in a sequence of waves, repeated every 20-30 seconds. This prediction is based on the fact that many of the functions of the central nervous system also have cycles of 30 seconds (this is, for example, the frequency of wave activity of neural networks). 

It turned out that of all the analyzed types of music is Mozart in volume peaks with a frequency closest to 30 seconds, repeated more often than all the rest. Perhaps there is an effect can be compared with resonance? The next phase of its work, Dr. Hughes is going to check whether the selected in accordance with this prediction excerpts of music have a very strong effect on the brain. 

But back to those experiments, which demonstrate the above-described positive effects of music by Mozart in healthy and sick people. All found at the same time had a better short-term nature. On the other hand, in all these experiments were adults with fully formed brain. 

For this reason, some researchers have suggested that perhaps the children, with their only evolving neural networks, hearing Mozart may cause not only short-term, but long-term, sustainable improvement in mental activity. That view, in particular, psychologist Frances Rauscher. 

And indeed, Rauscher as if found such an impact in the five-year observation of children. The children who received music lessons for two years, improved capacity for spatial thinking, and this effect did not disappear with time. 

Rauscher suggested that music can have a structural impact on the formation of neural circuits in the child’s brain. What followed that musical exposure in childhood can give a person intellectual benefits in adulthood. 

Study Mozart’s effect on children and other experiments on the effects on the development of a child’s brain gave rise widespread in American society of the so-called child of determinism – the theory that the first three years of life are crucial for brain formation of the child. Parents are taught to care about education of neural networks in the brain of a child in the very early age. 

The beginning of this new campaign, Rob Reiner put it in a book called “I am your child. The first years of life remain forever, he told readers. And it is because it is in the early years child’s brain forms trillions of synapses (the connections linking cerebral nerve cells). 

Therefore, stimulating environment for development in early childhood, before the final formation of brain structures are critical for the formation of synapses and thus for the formation of mental, musical and artistic abilities. 

Kindergarten – it’s too late. In other words, according to this idea that our fate does not depend on genes or even from the memories of happy childhood, and from those first three years of life when, presumably, formed neural networks in the brain. Every lullaby, or gulkane Ladushki cause outbreaks along neural paths, forming the basis for what later can become a talent for art or love for football. 

No wonder that, having received such information, millions of parents panicked. Just think, if you miss a critical infancy, suitable for stimulating the intellect, your child may never get into Harvard! And you’re to blame! 

Detail and criticized the “myth of the first three years,” dedicated his eponymous book, John Brewer, president of Mc Donnell in San Luis (American Missouri). This Fund finances research in neuroscience and cognition. 

Brewer detail and consistently reviewed the aspects of a child’s brain, which had already been and has not yet been studied by researchers, highlighting the link between research, politics and social policy. 

First of all, he cautioned against undue undesirable effects of noise that surrounds the study “Mozart effect”, and in general of exaggeration, with the inevitable distortion that the neurologist is currently known about brain development. 

The brouhaha over the “first three years,” makes parents and educators to give disproportionate attention to the “right” conditions, stimulating the development of a child under the age of three, who allegedly provide his further intellectual development. 

Brewer argues that “children’s determinism is based on unreasonably expanded the interpretation of certain studies of the brain, a heavily over-estimate their importance, not only by scientists but particularly from enthusiasts of child education and their supporters. 

One of the main justifications “child determinism” are studies showing that the majority of neural connections, or synapses formed in the brain of a child under the age of three. 

Indeed, the baby is born with a relatively small number of synapses, their number increases sharply to about age three, and then decreases to four or five years of stable, no longer changing throughout life. This picture does not cause controversy. But “mifotvortsy” insist that stimulate formation of synapses, and only during their growth, lays the foundation of intellectual abilities for life. 

Such an interpretation, says Brewer, it is very doubtful. First, there is no evidence that the presence of large number of synapses improves the ability to learn. 

Moreover, the increased number of synapses can lead to learning problems. This phenomenon was observed in the study of specific syndrome caused by inherited defect transmitted X-chromosome, which is accompanied by mental disability and an increased number of synapses in the brain. 

In addition to this well-known that adolescence – the age when the number of synapses is constant – is the most important period for learning and the formation of character and conduct.