Autumn 2005 Issue.pmd - Ohio State Engineer - The Ohio State ...

The he Power of
by sarah zaremba
Music
er of
The image of an expectant
mother placing headphones
on her bulging stomach so
her baby can enjoy
Beethoven’s 5th may seem strange, but
it is quickly becoming a new
phenomenon. Deemed the “Mozart
Effect,” musical training and
exposure have been shown to
improve higher functioning
capabilities of the brain:
suddenly, those headphones
aren’t looking quite so
crazy.
Studies show that
music has a strong
correlation with brain
expansion, academic
improvement, and
overall good feelings.
Dr. Frances Rauscher of
the University of
Wisconsin and physicist Dr.
Gordon Shaw of the
University of California led a
two-year experiment with
preschoolers that compared the
effects of musical verses
nonmusical training on intellectual
growth. The growth was measured
using tests that determined spatial
temporal capacity, the mind’s
ability to envision and rotate
images. The results
were impressive; the
children who
received musical
lessons received scores
that were 34 percent higher than
those of children who had not received
musical training. Researchers
concluded that a unique function of
music is to improve the higher brain
functioning required for mathematics,
chess, science, and engineering.
In a similar study, researchers gave
children at an inner-city daycare center
singing and piano lessons. Before and
after the experiment, the children took
after the experiment,
the children took tests that measured
tests that measured their powers of
reasoning. Six months after musical
training commenced, their scores
nearly doubled. The test indicated the
students had a greater understanding
of the way things fit together, which is
equivalent to the type of reasoning
that engineers or high-level
mathematicians utilize.
Music, like math, deals with the
ability to find, follow, and remember
patterns. “Playing the piano, for
instance, requires you to be able to look
ahead – you have to plan your finger
patterns based on where you think
you’re going,” said Dr. Rauscher,
who is also a psychologist at the
Center for Neurobiology of
Learning and Memory at
the University of
California. “By
exercising those brain
patterns through
music early in life,
we think it’s going
to have an effect on
your abstract
reasoning
throughout life.”
Rauscher claims
that music does not
just benefit children. In
another study she conducted, it
was discovered that IQ tests of
college students were nine points
higher when Mozart was played for
ten minutes prior to the test as
opposed to silence. This limited
exposure to music will not transform
anyone into a nuclear physicist, but it
can produce beneficial short-term
effects for individuals.
Many schools are instituting more
developed music programs to
encourage the development of the
brain. Some argue that funding for arts
programs takes money away from the
core curriculum. However, in another
study conducted by Shaw, dramatic
improvements in mathematical
performance were seen in children
who received piano instructions plus
a math skills video game compared to
children who had only played the
game. In the autumn of 2006, a
secondary school will be opening in
-09-
Autumn 2005