The Mozart Effect
Listening to Mozart enhances our brain activity. After listening to Mozart, the people in charge on standard IQ-test shows an increase of intelligence.
It is observed by some scientists phenomenon is called “Mozart Effect.” From him were immediately made far-reaching implications, especially for child-rearing, the first three years of life have been hailed for determining their future intelligence.
This theory has gained such a strong public reaction, that CDs of Mozart, with recommendations of parents, once in the beginning of the bestseller list, and the governor of the U.S. state of Georgia presented with a Mozart CD every new mother in his state.
True, the excitement had died down somewhat after some critics have tried to check the “Mozart effect” and does not have the predicted result. As for the children, in his book, an authority on the study of the brain and cognition John Brewer shows that “the myth of the first three years of” life has no reason and the human brain continues to change and to learn throughout life. Learn more about mp3 downloads.
However intriguing hypothesis about the influence of music on brain activity not only keeps walking, but in recent years even received a number of compelling new evidence, both subjective and objective.
What is true that just a lie, and that – statistics?
For the first time this idea came across more than a decade ago neuroscientist Gordon Shaw of the University of California (USA) and his graduate student Leng during the first attempts to simulate the brain to a computer.
It is known that different groups of nerve cells in the brain perform different kinds of mental operations. Shaw and Lang created a computer model of a certain group of “cells” (actually – ECG) and check what happens if we change the way of connecting these “cells” with each other.
They found that each circuit diagram, that is, each regular “network” formed by the same cells, generates output signals that form and rhythm. Once they got the idea to convert those signals into sound output. To their great surprise it turned out that these signals have a musical character that is reminiscent of a kind of music, and more – every time you change the ways cells connect to the network nature of this “music” varied: sometimes it resembled a meditative melody of “New Age” sometimes – Eastern motifs, and even classical music.
But if the commission of cognitive operations in the brain is a “musical” character, thought Gordon Shaw, neither can it be that the music, in turn, can affect mental activity, stimulating certain neural networks?
Because these networks are formed in childhood, Shaw decided to use to test your hypothesis works of Mozart, who, as we know, began composing music at the age of four years. If one thing can affect the innate neural structure, reasoned scientist, it should be children’s music by Mozart.
Gordon Shaw and his colleague, psychologist Frances Rauscher decided to use for the experiment standard IQ-test to check if the music of Mozart to stimulate the mind’s ability to manipulate geometric shapes.
Ability to present the imagination different stereoscopic objects changing their position in space (for example, a rotation around its axis) is necessary in a number of the exact sciences, such as mathematics.
In 1995, Shaw and Rauscher published a study, which involved 79 college students. Students were asked to answer, what forms can be obtained from tissue paper, folding it and carving out a different way.