EVEN LISTENING TO MUSIC IS PROVEN TO MAKE
YOU SMARTER! NO JOKE.One important center of this research has been the University of California at Irvine,
where Drs. Gordon Shaw and Fran Rauscher have found that active music making
improves children’s math skills. Shaw is a physicist who found that the inner working of
the human brain operates in patterns that resemble musical structures, and he suspects
that music may be the key to understanding intelligence.
Other research supports similar conclusions: at McGill University in Canada, researchers
found that kids who take piano lessons showed improved general and spatial cognitive
development, and studies at a Miami Veterans Administration hospital indicate that
music making may improve the brain’s natural production of regulatory hormones like
melatonin. And most amazingly, an experiment by Rauscher showed that listening to the
first ten minutes of the Mozart Concerto for Two Pianos in D Major (K. 448) improved
the listeners’ spatial-temporal reasoning!
In the days of the New England singing-schools, people believed in teaching and learning
music because it was good for the soul. We’ve learned a lot since then.
If music really can make a person better at math, science and engineering, and if just
listening to music can make you smarter, why wouldn’t anyone want to benefit from
music?
As we begin a new century, there is proof about the power of music education.
And it’s still good for your soul.
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