Yes. The Mozart Effect refers to brief enhanced performance on spatial-temporal tasks (such as solving puzzles or working out proportions) following 10 minutes of exposure to Mozart’s "Sonata For Two Pianos, K 448." Although the effect is “real,” it is not clear what actually causes it. Current data suggest that any music or auditory event that is arousing will produce the effect. This ability is important for solving multi-step problems, such as those tackled by architects, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, and artists. Spatial-temporal reasoning is also important for music cognition. In order to see cognitive improvement through music instruction, the instruction should begin before age six or seven, continue for at least two years, and it must be high quality instruction.
2) What happens to rats who listen to music?
Rats that were exposed to Mozart for 12 hours a day for 60 days completed a maze faster and with fewer errors than rats that were exposed to Philip Glass, white noise, or silence. There is some evidence that this is due to synaptic plasticity in the rat hippocampus incurred by exposure to Mozart.
Synaptic plasticity is one of the most important processes involved in learning and memory. It refers to the strengthening of the space (synapses) between neurons as a function of use or disuse. Everytime someone learns something, there is a physiological change in the brain. The more a neural pathway is used, the stronger the connection between those neurons involved becomes (this is why practice makes perfect.)
Babies are born with almost all the neurons they will have throughout their lifetimes, but many of the connections between neurons (the neural pathways) form after birth as a function of experience. Neural connections that are not used die out. The hippocampus, which is largely responsible for spatial learning and memory, is one of the most plastic areas of the brain.
3) Can music make you smarter?
This is an overgeneralization. Our data suggest that students who learn to play a musical instrument (rather than those who just listen to music) perform better on spatial-temporal and phonemic awareness tasks than children who are involved in other activities, such as swimming or computer lessons.
Phonemic awareness is the ability to discriminate speech sounds, a.k.a. “phonemes.” Phonemes are the smallest speech sounds that carry meaning. Breaking words down into their separate speech sounds (phonemes) requires phonemic awareness. For example, a person who can break down the word "stop" into its four separate phonemes (s-t-o-p) is showing phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness correlates strongly with pitch discrimination and reading acquisition.
Other researchers’ data suggest that overall intelligence may be affected by music instruction as well, although the data from my lab show effects only for spatial-temporal and early reading abilities. Mathematical ability may also be improved through music instruction, although not all studies are consistent.
4) Do different instruments – or different types of music – affect cognitive functions differently?
There is very little data on this, because most of the studies have used keyboard instruction. Our research shows that instruction in voice, rhythm instruments, and keyboard improves spatial-temporal reasoning. Also, children provided with instruction in rhythm instruments scored higher on numeracy tasks than those provided with voice or keyboard instruction. Finally, we have recently found that children provided with violin instruction score higher on phonemic awareness tasks (required for learning to read) than those provided with swimming lessons.
5) Should music be taught in schools?
Yes, music should be taught in schools - for its musical benefits. If one wishes to enhance spatial or mathematical abilities, there are likely more direct ways to do so.
Frances Rauscher is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh. She documented the "Mozart Effect" in 1993, along with colleagues Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky.
If this sounds like the idealistic fantasies of a frustrated educational innovator, think again.
What I have just described is exactly the environment I experienced when I went to a New York City junior high school located in the borough of Queens in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Sadly this magnificent system that sought out talent and motivation, and that included students from every ethnic group and religion, no longer exists in the New York City school system of 2011.
The reasons for the dissolution of such a powerful system are attributed today to economic conditions of the 1970’s and an effort to put greater emphasis on core courses like English or mathematics, but the real reason is much more troubling. Our educational systems around America no longer have leaders who put value on artistic experiences within primary and secondary school curricula.
Juilliard currently runs a program started in 1990 called the Music Advancement Program (MAP) which recruits and enrolls under-represented and economically disadvantaged children for a Saturday program at our School at Lincoln Center, where each student has a private music lesson with an experienced teacher, as well as ensemble experiences and classes in music theory and history. Invariably these MAP students (who range in age from 8 to 14) not only excel in their chosen instrument but also realize better grades in their academic studies and are identified as leaders by their peers in school and beyond.
The reasons for this success are not highly complex or esoteric, in my view. Our MAP students embrace the beauty, discipline, and pure joy of making music. They are encouraged – actually required – to use their imaginations and creativity to realize their musical goals. Their group work with their fellow student musicians make them better listeners and more empathetic individuals. They are motivated because they come to appreciate the complexity and challenges of what it is to be a serious musician and to accomplish set goals with clarity and a type of personal courage that would be appreciated by anyone who has ever tried to perform in public.
Today the arts are simply undervalued or completely ignored by many school systems around America. In New York City, teachers, principals, and entire schools are evaluated based on test scores in reading, mathematics, the sciences, but not in the arts.
I have met troubled school principals throughout New York City who have supported thriving arts programs in their individual schools and are frustrated by the fact that these arts programs are not considered when their schools are evaluated for the effectiveness of their teaching. As a result, these administrators and teachers often become despondent and either give up on these arts programs or simply disappear into retirement because New York City has no structural way to reward these educational leaders for their good work in the arts.
Sadly, America has had a long history of ignoring or undervaluing the arts. Today we see a disturbing number of our representatives in Washington, D.C. working to eliminate both the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, although each endowment’s budget is in the range of $150 million – a paltry sum when viewed in the context of the current federal budget.
Recently, the House Committee on Education & the Workforce approved HR 1891, repealing specific provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. This new bill terminates 42 federal education programs, including the longstanding Arts in Education program at the U.S. Department of Education. Of major concern is that HR 1891 permanently strips policy language out of ESEA that allows Arts in Education to be funded each year.
It is time that legislators, school administrators, parents and the general public collectively come together to reinstate the presence of the arts in our schools’ curricula. Some of the attributes that we value most in our country – discipline, creativity, imagination, empathy, unconventional thinking – are exactly the qualities that are nurtured and developed by the study of the arts.
Let us not let down another generation of our children by allowing the arts to be disregarded by our educational systems around America.
Joseph Polisi is the president of The Juilliard School and an accomplished bassoonist.
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