The Mozart Effect: Music and Cognition

As a musician who began playing classical piano at the age of five and singing operatically at the age of thirteen, I never thought until recently about the impact that my music education has had on me. However, a few months ago, I heard about a phenomenon called “The Mozart Effect.” The term Mozart Effect was coined in 1991 by Alfred A. Tomatis, but the major bulk of research was done by Don Campbell, the author of the book The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit. According to Campbell, after listening to Mozart’s music, specifically Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, a student’s intelligence, spatial awareness, concentration, and speech abilities are temporarily improved. Also, having music education can help a child’s cognition as well. This week, I decided to search the blogosphere to find out what other musicians think about this phenomenon. Within Blogger, I found a blog called A Time For Music. The post I found interesting, written by Jesse Fischer, a musician and producer living in Brooklyn, N.Y., is called Mozart Effect – Not the Only Game in Town. In his post, Fischer briefly mentions The Mozart Effect and the research surrounding it. I therefore expanded on his topics with the information that I learned while conducting my research. The other post that I decided to respond to was written by Christian Salvesen, a master of philosophy, literature sciences, and music sciences. The post, simply entitled The Mozart Effect, was published on Madhukar. In it, Mr. Salvesen delves deeper into the actual cognitive effects that Mozart’s music has on the brain. I therefore merely offered my further knowledge to expand on what he already researched. My comments can be found below or on the original blog posts themselves.

Mozart Effect – Not the Only Game in Town
My Comment:
First of all, I would like to thank you for writing this post. It was very thought provoking and of a subject matter that has had much debate in the past few years. As a music student myself who is very interested in the relationship between music and cognition, I have done much research into this phenomenon known as The Mozart Effect and would like to touch on and expand some of the points that you made.

First of all, you stated that Mozart “had an interesting head start… listening to his parents play the piano and the violin months before he was born.” I appreciate that you recognize this as being significant. Many people might not agree that this exposure to music while in the womb could have influenced Mozart. However, there has been much research conducted that shows that exposing unborn babies to classical music, and Mozart’s music in particular, can be greatly beneficial. It can stimulate a baby’s heart rate and can even cause more movement inside the womb. It can also enhance the baby’s development by minimizing or completely eliminating developmental delays. Doctors even recommend playing music for premature babies because it has been shown that premature babies who are exposed to music early on have higher survival rates than ones who are not.

I would also like to expand on the “countless studies [that] have shown… the use of music to improve memory, awareness, and the integration of learning style.” It is proven that between six and eight years old, a child’s skull and brain grows in size, and, as it grows, new links are formed between the child’s visual, speech, and motor regions. The child begins to be able to link what she sees directly to what she hears. Also, her logical reasoning and abstract thinking improves. The more music that the child is exposed to during this time, the better the brain’s neural integration. The rhythm in music helps the child’s logical reasoning, and the melody helps her intellectual discernment. On top of that, actively making music, or actively learning, combines mental and sensory memories, which enhances memory more than passive learning does. Musicians’ brains are different than everyone else’s because musicians combine mental and sensory learning daily.

Finally, I would like to briefly mention how “studying music [creates] a sense of order and harmony necessary for intelligent thought.” With its physical vibrations, rhythms, and patterns, music alters the brain in a way that regular learning cannot. This type of learning advances a person’s reading and language skills, and, if exposed to music at a young age, it can help raise a child’s test scores.

The Mozart Effect
My Comment:
I would like to start off by thanking you for writing this blog. I found it extremely interesting and informative. I especially found the section that solely focuses on The Mozart Effect to be intriguing. I have done much research in the past on this phenomenon, especially with its relation to children and the growing brain, and have always been interested in the relationship between music and cognition. As a musician who started on the piano and continued on to singing, I have always questioned whether my musical training had any affect on other aspects of my learning. I therefore found it interesting when you said that the Mozart Effect could foster “higher brainpower, increased learning ability, increased ability of decision-making, more intuitive powers, alertness and creativity.” In doing my research on this phenomenon, I came across an aspect of interest that could further support and validate your statement. I found that there are three ways of learning: enactive, iconic, and symbolic. Enactive learning involves action and manipulation, iconic involves imagery and perceptual organization, and symbolic involves words and other symbols. The enactive and iconic modes of cognition are how young children know music. Therefore, learning and listening to music at a young age can enhance a child’s cognitive growth. This enhancement leads to many things, including increased visualization, learning abilities, and reading abilities.

By adding to a child’s cognitive growth, music helps motor and rhythmic development and helps develops language and vocal skills. Over specialized education can be harmful to a student because it dispenses information but does not foster understanding. In order to see long-term effects of learning, multiple areas of the brain must be working. Music is made up of rhythm, which has pulse, beat, tempo, and meter. Listening to rhythms helps to stimulate all parts of the brain. Eurhythmics, which is education in rhythm, involves multiple areas of the brain in challenging and creative ways. Actively listening to music can help long-term learning, and listening to classical music, especially, will sharpen a student’s thinking and long-term learning. Music causes the entire brain to work rather than just one side of the brain. Therefore, practicing music before doing homework or school work of any kind can help the work go faster, be easier, and can actually help the student to remember her work for a longer period of time.

Finally, music can help improve a student’s reading abilities. There is a noticeable relationship between reading and understanding pitch. Pitch actually helps in word identification. Music education improves pitch discrimination, which helps reading. Also, music helps reading because it helps the student to visually recognize words and helps to associate the visual words with her spoken sounds.

After concluding my research, I found that The Mozart Effect is actually a true phenomenon that can help in the growth of a young child. Therefore, I am delighted to see that others are seriously considering this phenomenon to be of importance. Thank you again for your research and insight into the subject.