IannaRamdhany

Speaking truth to Power: Oh, wise one, youre making all the wrong choices for me!
*My father and I always disagree on whether I should study with music on or not,
heres how it usually all goes down*
Dad: There is no way that you can study with music on.
Ianna: but its classical
Dad: but its still distracting
Ianna: You shouldnt determine your parenting on what you think nor what you have
heard because I have read several articles that show that classical musical helps. For
examples, have you heard of the Mozart effect?
Dad: No, what is it?
Ianna; Here, read this.

The Mozart Effect Studies

Early experimentation on the effect of music on the brain was conducted in
1988, when neurobiologist Gordon Shaw, along with graduate student Xiaodan
Leng, first attempted to model brain activity on a computer at the University
of California at Irvine . They found in simulations that the way nerve cells
were connected to one another predisposed groups of cells to adopt certain
specific firing patterns and rhythms. Shaw surmises that these patterns form
the basic exchange of mental activity. Inquisitively, they decided to turn the
output of their simulations into sounds instead of a conventional printout. To
their surprise, the rhythmic patterns sounded somewhat familiar, with some of
the characteristics of baroque, new age, or Eastern music.
Shaw hypothesized: If brain activity can sound like music, might it be possible
to begin to understand the neural activity by working in reverse and observing
how the brain responds to music? Might patterns in music somehow stimulate
the brain by activating similar firing patterns of nerve clusters?

He later joined two other researchers, Frances Rauscher and Katherine Ky, in
creating the study that coined the term "Mozart Effect". In the October 14, 1993,
issue of "Nature" they published a short summary of the findings from their
experiment. They assigned thirty six Cal-Irvine students to one of three
groups, and offered the same "pretest" to each of the students. One group
then listened to a selection by Mozart (Sonata in D major for Two Pianos,
K488). A second group listened to what was called a "relaxation tape," and the
third group was subjected to ten minutes of silence. All of the students were
given the same test, which was designed to measure spatial IQ. This test is
described as mentally unfolding a piece of paper is that has been folded over
several times and then cut. The object is to correctly select the final unfolded
paper shape from five examples. The students who listened to the Mozart
sonata averaged a 9 point increase in their IQ as compared to the average of
the students who had listened to the relaxation tape or who had experienced
silence. The increase in IQ of the Mozart group was transitory, lasting only
about the time it took to take the test-- from ten to fifteen minutes.