The power of Mozart’s music came to public attention largely through innovative research at the University of California in the mid-1990s. At the Centre for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory in Irvine, a research team began to look at the effects of Mozart on college students and children.
Frances H. Rauscher, PhD, and her colleagues conducted a study in which 36 undergraduates from the psychology department scored eight to nine points higher on the spatial IQ test after listening to ten minutes of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major.
Mozart’s music “may ‘warm up’ the brain”, suggested Gordon Shaw, a theoretical physicist and one of the Irvine researchers. He suspects that complex music facilitates certain complex neuronal patterns involved in high brain activities like maths and chess. By contrast, simple and repetitive music could have the opposite effect.
In a follow-up study, the scientists explored the neurophysiological bases of this enhancement. Spatial intelligence was further tested by projecting 16 abstract figures similar to folded pieces of paper on an overhead screen for one minute each.
The exercises tested whether 79 students could tell how the items would look when they were unfolded. Over a five-day period, one group listened to the original Mozart sonata, another to silence, and a third to mixed sounds, including the music of Philip Glass, an audiotaped story, and a dance piece.
The researchers reported that all three groups improved their scores from day one to day two, but the Mozart group’s pattern recognition soared 62 percent compared to 14 percent for the silence group and 11 percent for the mixed-sound group. The Mozart group continued to achieve the highest scores on subsequent days.
Proposing a mechanism for this effect, the scientists suggested that listening to Mozart helps “organise” the firing patterns of neurons in the cerebral cortex, especially strengthening creative right-brain processes associated with spatial-temporal reasoning.
Listening to music, they concluded, acts as “an exercise” for facilitating operations associated with higher brain function. In plain English, it can improve your concentration and enhance your ability to make intuitive leaps.
Following the Irvine studies, a number of public schools introduced Mozart pieces as background music and reported improvements in their pupils’ attention and performance. The Mozart Effect is real!