| MUSIC STRIKES A RIGHT NOTE By Bill Hendrick, Cox News Service In case you haven't heard: Ms. Munk's class has been listening to Classical Music while they complete their independent work. What's the link between classical music and the Brain? Read on. LOS ANGELES - Fran Rauscher doesn't touch her cello anymore. It did weird things to her mind. It transformed her from a child prodigy into a prodigious research scientist who, at 36, is out to convince anyone within earshot of her lilting voice that music is a key to unlocking hidden secrets about the brain. Without bowing her own cello, which she hasn't played in 12 years, she keeps quietly producing evidence compelling enough to convince juries of her skeptical scientific peers. In short, by studying groups of toddlers and college students, Rauscher and colleagues at the University of California-Irvine's Center for Neurobiology of Learning have shown that people can enhance some higher brain functions by playing or even just listening to music. Among her provocative conclusions: Very young children who take music lessons are better at certain tasks than other kids. Music can enhance reasoning abilities at any age. Complex music, such as Mozart sonata, stimulates the brain, and simpler types-such as hard rock-may get feet moving but not make brain circuits fire faster. "These findings are very important and have huge implications," Rauscher says. "We think we have a powerful weapon for educators. Each child could have a chance to reach full potential." Rauscher began studying the links between music and the mind after her "first life" as a virtuoso cellist in the late 1970's. She quit playing as a professional about 12 years ago, in part because, as a perfectionist, she couldn't stand hitting sour notes. Soon after taking a job entertaining patients in psychiatric wards, she noticed something "intriguing". She found that even catatonic patients who never blinked reacted "in a very positive way" to her music. Armed with a bachelor's degree in music, she went to graduate school to study psychology, then earned a Ph.D. and has been doing research ever since, trying to solve mysteries about the brain, how it works and why. Rauscher published her first significant findings last year. In a study of 84 college students, she found those who listened to Mozart's Sonata for two Pianos in D Major for 10 minutes before taking IQ tests scored considerable higher than subjects exposed for the same period to silence or a meditation tape. Later, a pilot study of 3 -year -old children found that those who were given music lessons scored "substantially better" on reasoning tests than other kids. The same experiment, expanded from 10 to 33 children this year, produced similar results, "demonstrating an unmistakable causal link between music and spatial intelligence", Rauscher says. The study with college students showed that the "Mozart effect" made them smarter for only 15 minutes or so. But Rauscher says the impact lasts much longer with young people, " the younger the better". Rauscher's research has found that those who study music and play it at a young age may boost cognitive skills permanently, by priming the brain to process certain kinds of information. In the latest study, Rauscher and her colleagues studied children between age 3 and 4 with similar demographic traits. They measured the IQs of the kids, who were divided into two groups. Nineteen received daily group singing lessons, weekly private lessons on electronic keyboards and daily keyboard practice. The other 14 received no musical training. After just four months children taking music were scoring "significantly better" on spatial intelligence tests than the others, and improvement continued until the end, she says. Tests revealed that kids who had music lessons scored 43 percent higher than those who didn't. Spatial intelligence is the ability to perceive the world accurately, to form mental images of physical objects and recognize variations of objects. It's necessary for such higher brain functions as complex mathematics and chess. "(It's) essential for architects, navigators, engineers, graphic designers and astronomers," Rauscher notes. Educators are widely cheering Rauscher's work, contending that it should reverse "the commonly held view of music education as essentially irrelevant to intellectual development. Rauscher points out that researchers are uncertain about the mechanisms at work here. Do grades go up because kids are involved in music, or are children who are prone to do well in school more likely to take up trumpets and cellos? In any case, Rauscher is conducting follow-up studies of 110 preschoolers to determine whether finger dexterity has an effect on the brain. In the new study, students who receive computer training will be compared with those who receive piano lessons. |
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