SubscribeDoes listening to Mozart make you smarter? According to a landmark neuroscience research study out of the University of California, Mozart’s sonata for two pianos K448 (which you can listen to below) can indeed increase your spatial-temporal IQ scores by 9 points. While the duration of the effect on your brain is only about 10-15 minutes, the findings are nonetheless fascinating.
- Spatial-temporal intelligence allows you to perform 3-D type manipulations on a mental image. It’s thought to be important for problems that arise in areas such as “mathematics, engineering, architecture, science, art, games (e.g. chess) and everyday life”. (ref: wikipedia)
This original study, published by Rauscher in the journal Nature, has given birth to what is now known as ‘The Mozart Effect‘. While many people have used the research to peddle exaggerated claims and products (like Mozart music tapes for parents to play in their child’s nursery), I think there is clearly something noteworthy going on with this type of music and the brain.
For example, further research shows that K448:
- Significantly increases the speed & ability of rats navigating through mazes
- Strikingly diminishes the number of seizures in patients with epilepsy
What is so special about K448? How might it power up your brain? According to one Mozart authority, K448 is “one of the most profound and most mature of all Mozart’s compositions”.
A more scientific explanation, however, may have been uncovered by the work of Neurology Professor John Hughes. As he comments in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine:
…we have found a long-lasting periodicity in the power of Mozart’s music, seen also with JS Bach and his son JC Bach. Furthermore we have just analyzed the melodic line and find that Mozart repeats his melodic line far more frequently than other well-known composers, but often in an ingenious manner reversing the notes. We feel that periodicity is the key or secret here and characterizes many brain and bodily functions.
In other words, Mozart’s K448 is characterized by a high degree of long-term periodicity. The music cycles, with elements recurring at regular intervals.
While I do think that certain types of music can have interesting and significant effects on brain function, I do not believe merely listening to Mozart can drive long term gains in brain power. (And if you look at the findings of the original ‘Mozart Effect’ research paper, the authors never claimed such).
If you are looking to utilize music as a way to boost brain function long-term, the path you’ll need to pursue is learning how to play an instrument. Here the research shows convincing and significant benefits, and I refer you to this great webpage that summarizes them. [As to the possible mechanism by which music instruction improves brain power, you may enjoy reading one of the first posts I made on the Smartkit website here].
If you’d like to read more about Mozart K448 and its varied effects on the brain, I recommend this excellent summary article by Dr. J S Jenkins, which can be found here.
Share This Post:![[Slashdot]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/slashdot-big.png)
![[Reddit]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/reddit-big.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/facebook-icon.gif){kind=icon}
![[Google]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/google-bookmark-big.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/stumble-big.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.smart-kit.com/wp-content/uploads/_graphics/digg-big.png)
Well as a novice pianist myself at the at the tender age of 15,I also have seen and experienced the greatness of music as a whole and its effect on the mental state of a human.In my own examinations and academic study I have benefitted from practising and listening to classical.This post here I must say is as close to the truth as ever beore Mozart’s music truly does have a profound and significant effect on the brain in conjunction with the playing of a musical instrument.
Robert Clayton was kind enough to submit this interesting article he wrote on Music, Sound and Vibration:
Michael Persinger, a researcher, by stimulating specific regions of their brains with electromagnetic pulses, induced religious experiences in subjects. In other words, he had found the ‘God Spot’. This is an interesting experiment with vibrations.
Also found by Newberg and d’Aquili through a process called Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography, or SPECT.
Everything is energy and information. Coded by vibrations. The atoms of diamonds or pig ears, are simply atoms that are vibrating at different frequencies.
I have this theory that when we introduce medicines into our body, what we are doing is ingesting a substance that is vibrating at such a rate that it nullifies harmful vibrations that exist in an ill person. Like certain types of sound can nullify other noises. and it would seem that homeopathy shows that. Researchers put a substance that was known to induce reactions in people into water to measure the degree of the reaction. Then they diluted the water by half, and concussed the water by shaking it vigorously. To their surprise they found the water still caused the same degree of effect. So they diluted by half and concussed again. And so on. After diluting the water so many times that there was not a single molecule of the original substance left in the water, it still had the ability to cause the same full degree of effect on the subjects as the original recipe. It seems the substance had passed on the information/vibration rate to the water itself. Water has a memory of the vibrations of elements that are introduced to it.
((French allergist Bienveniste of the University of Paris South., as published in the prestigious British science journal Nature.))
According to some researchers studies, healing occurs through changes in the electromangnetic fields.. in other words… vibrations.
Orthopedist Robert Becker.. et al.
Everything in the universe is vibrations. If you vibrate a piece of wire at 500 trillion times per second, you release a lot of energy and get a large explosion. And yet the dye molecule in your retina vibrates at that rate to enable you to perceive the color yellow and it it does not explode. Something internal nullifies the effects. Like certain sounds nullifying other sounds. Quantum physicists tell us that there is more potential energy in a single cubic centimeter of empty space than is being physically expressed in the known universe. This makes sense to me because this is a holographic universe. The description of a hologram, is that, every bit of it it is in every bit of it. Take the eagle hologram on your visa card and cut it in half, and both halves will contain the entire eagle. Cut both of those halves in two again, and all the resulting pieces will contain the entire eagle, and so on and so forth. that is the nature of a hologram. So the entire universe would have to be in every bit of the universe.
Healers make use of the energy of vibrations to heal. The rate at which the healthy healer is vibrating, is somehow passed to the healee, altering their vibrational rate to a healthy vibrational rate.
It’s no good claiming ‘quackery’, as there is indisputable evidence in the literature that proves this happens.
The ear is an instrument of reception.. but Otologists have found that it also transmits frequency. Vibrations again.
Tibetan monks can somehow harness this energy while sitting outside all night naked in sub zero weather with wet sheets draped over their shoulders. They cause their bodies to vibrate at such a rate that they emit huge amounts of heat.
Sound was used by Tibetans to levitate large stones. Sound is vibration. Nada Brahma.
“In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God.”
Genesis–
copyright 2006
Robert Clayton
[...] Su Mozart è stato detto e scritto di tutto e di più. Morto ad appena 35 anni, ha lasciato ai posteri centinaia di spartiti di musica sinfonica, da camera, sacra e operistica. Ora la genialità della sua musica sembra aver mostrato un nuovo aspetto oltre a quello di sucitare grandisse emozioni, ossia di aumentare il quoziente intellettivo di chi la ascolta. Non stiamo parlando però di una musica a caso di Mozart, ma della Sonata per due pianoforti in Re maggiore k 448. Secondo alcuni studi compiuti sembra infatti che dopo l’ascolto di questa particolare musica, il QI di chi l’ha ascoltata aumenti di circa 9 punti. L’effetto però svanisce molto preso, dopo circa 15 minuti negli adulti, mentre dura più a lungo nei bambini. Se volete quindi fare bella figura con il vostro capo dicendo qualcosa di intelligente, ascoltate la sonata e poi correte a bussare alla porta del suo ufficio. Figurone garantito! [...]
Listen Mozart is Wonderful!!!
What a great read! I too listen to Mozart and having studied music education and having three children, I can emphatically state that listening to classical music enhances brain function. You see, music is the only thing we have that uses both sides of the brain. A musician’s brain is absolutely amazing. It vibrates at a far higher frequency than any other brain.
I run a big band for children in an attempt to get them listening to real instruments and complex music and this too grows their brains. It’s the tempo, the harmony, the timbre (especially the timbre because this is right brain), the melody, the lyrics all together. Simply put, music is a metaphor for life. It can only exist when it is in co-operation with the world. It knows no boundary be it race, gender, religion , age or intellect. Someone brain dead can hear a note or a chord in the same way that an Einstein hears it. Music doesn’t go through the intellect. It goes through our emotions.
I urge you all to get your children listening to Mozart as early as possible!
[...] The Mozart Effect: How the amazing Mozart’s sonata for two pianos (K448) can increase you IQ in 10 minutes [...]