Controversy about “the Mozart effect,” or the claim that listening to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sonata in D Major ups intelligence, has raged ever since 1993 when two researchers linked listening to the piano piece with improving spatial reasoning skills in college students.
Physicists Gordon Shaw and Frances Rauscher at the University of California at Irvine studied the effects of the Sonata in D on a few dozen college students and found a temporary enhancement of spatial reasoning, as measured by an IQ test.
Students’ ability to mentally cut and fold a piece of paper, or rotate and compare objects conceptually in space was increased for about 10-15 minutes — sort of like a get-smart-quick formula.
Later, evidence showed that rats negotiated a maze faster after hearing Mozart than rats that could hear nothing at all or that were played different music.
In another study, children who were taught the piano for six months did better on the kind of spatial reasoning that makes good chess players and mathematicians than children who spent time on computers.
But the study struck a false chord with a number of scientists.
According to Kenneth Steele, psychology professor at Appalachian State University, there is no real intelligence enhancing or health benefit in listening to Mozart.
“There is absolutely no evidence to support the existence of the effect,” said Steele after
he published a counter-study in the July 1999 issue of Psychological Science.
Jamal Munshi, an associate professor of Business Administration at Sonoma State University, collects tidbits of misinformation and gullibility and posts them on the Internet as “Weird but True,” including the claim that Shaw and Rauscher showed that listening to Mozart’s sonata increased SAT scores by 51 points.
In addition, researchers have since reported that listening to Mozart actually makes some people dumber.
But recent work with epilepsy patients has indicated what Dr. John Jenkins calls a “more impressive indication of a Mozart effect” and lent the theory a needed bit of credibility.
In his study, Sonata in D was played to subjects, most of whom showed a decrease in epileptic fits and epileptiform activity — the patterns in the brain that produce epileptic seizures.
“If you go into music shops, you’ll find CDs of Mozart with a picture of a baby on the sleeve
and the words, ‘Your baby needs Mozart,’” said Jenkins, an emeritus professor at the University of London. “I think that’s jumping the gun, but this is something that needs further investigation.”
Professor Jenkins examined the UC-Irvine study that found Mozart boosted the spatial reasoning powers — the ability to visualize — of those who listened to it.
“It doesn’t have an effect on ordinary basic intelligence. It was this particular spatial intelligence that worked,” Jenkins wrote in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Why Mozart?
Jenkins said what makes Mozart’s double piano sonata unique is its high degree of long-term periodicity — wave forms repeated regu
larly, but not very close together, throughout the piece.
“It is suggested that music with a high degree of long-term periodicity … would resonate within the brain to decrease seizure activity and to enhance spatial performance,” Jenkins said.
In contrast, music which had no effect on either spatial reasoning or on epileptic seizures did not have long-term periodicity.
According to Jenkins, an explanation for the results obtained after listening to music may lie in the manner in which music and spatial imaging are processed within the brain.
“Music activates a wide distribution of brain areas,” Jenkins said. “I am suggesting that listening to music would prime the activation of those areas of the brain which are concerned with spatial reasoning.”
Brain scans have shown rhythm and pitch tend to be processed on the left side of the brain, and timbre and melody on the right. Those parts of the brain that are used for spatial tasks actually overlap with the music processing parts.
Jenkins said he has found evidence from around the world that works from other classical composers, such as Johann Sebastian Bach, can benefit health as well. These pieces also have long-term periodicity, and he said more
research is needed to discover the key ingredient in the effects of certain music.
Music by Yanni, a contemporary Greek-American composer, has also been found to have beneficial effects. But music such as the minimalist compositions of Philip Glass or most early pop music did not have this factor.
“These effects are not specific to Mozart’s compositions,” Jenkins said. “For the benefits to be of real use, we need to discover exactly what musical criteria have to be present for the ‘Mozart effect’ to take place.”
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