The Mozart effect
Music may tune up your thinking, but you can't just crank up the volume and expect to become a genius

A DECADE ago Frances Rauscher, a psychologist now at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, and her colleagues made waves with the discovery that listening to Mozart improved people's mathematical and spatial reasoning. Even rats ran mazes faster and more accurately after hearing Mozart than after white noise or music by the minimalist composer Philip Glass. Last year, Rauscher reported that, for rats at least, a Mozart piano sonata seems to stimulate activity in three genes involved in nerve-cell signalling in the brain.

This sounds like the most harmonious way to tune up your mental faculties. But before you grab the CDs, hear this note of caution. Not everyone who has looked for the Mozart effect has found it. What's more, even its proponents tend to think that music boosts brain power simply because it makes listeners feel better - relaxed and stimulated at the same time - and that a comparable stimulus might do just as well. In fact, one study found that listening to a story gave a similar performance boost.

There is, however, one way in which music really does make you smarter, though unfortunately it requires a bit more effort than just selecting something mellow on your iPod. Music lessons are the key. Six-year-old children who were given music lessons, as opposed to drama lessons or no extra instruction, got a 2 to 3-point boost in IQ scores compared with the others. Similarly, Rauscher found that after two years of music lessons, pre-school children scored better on spatial reasoning tests than those who took computer lessons.

Maybe music lessons exercise a range of mental skills, with their requirement for delicate and precise finger movements, and listening for pitch and rhythm, all combined with an emotional dimension. Nobody knows for sure. Neither do they know whether adults can get the same mental boost as young children. But, surely, it can't hurt to try.


some interesting shit...that means that ya'll is alot smarter than u woulda been if u havent gotten inta music

well i use to take vioce lessons and taught myself to play keys
so im smarter than u zachy

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SIGNED RAPPER YOU LOOKIN AT

i was born smarter hahaha

Wtf? This isnt about jesus. Get the fuck out of LL you bitch.

lol yo get online dawg^^^

Nothing new that music helps boost your intellect...Growing up, we were always told that being in band and playing an instrument helps you in math and other subjects.


Guess that's why I was a straight A student.



*CHEESE*

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Youtube Video for my song "CARRY ON"

I can play the guitar and piano and I'm getting a GED. Damn rap music.

In school, I played the clarinet and the baritone, which was torture on my embouchure.

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Youtube Video for my song "CARRY ON"

*waits for a sea of "this is why I'm so smart!" responses*

But Illusion, credit the author nucca! lol

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lol werd i forgot who the auther was oh well im smarter cuz im musical

Blah i lose intrest in piano if its not a westcoast gangsta beat matched with some violins those are dope

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