Music Makes You Smarter!

Music Makes You Smarter

Did you know that learning to play an instrument or even just listening to music makes you smarter? Music helps people concentrate better on a variety of tasks.

A vast amount of research has shown that there are direct links between music and intelligence and music and brain function. The "Mozart Effect" is one idea that states a positive correlation between classical music and intelligence.

Music and Intelligence

With the advancements in technology, scientists have been able to use brain-scanning machines to examine the theories about a direct link between music and intelligence. The results have shown that musicians’ brains are distinctively different.

The tests revealed that children who play musical instruments have a significant amount of more gray matter in the occipital lobes and sensor motor cortex. The scans also show that most musicians have more gray matter in many different regions of the brain.

Other studies have shown that children who take music lessons have IQ's that are slightly higher than children who do not engage in music. Music lessons were associated with high fluid intelligence including processing speed, perceptual organization and working memory.

Music lessons show a link between music and intelligence because lessons train children to focus their attention for long time periods, teach musical notation, and help children recognize sound patterns across time.

Music and Brain Function

Many studies have shown that musicians perform better on a variety of tests than their peers who are not involved in music. Musicians typically scored significantly higher on finger tapping and vocabulary tests. They also showed a strong trend toward higher math and spatial skills.

Musicians also perform better on cognitive tasks such as tests of math ability, verbal memory, spatial-temporal skills, reading skills, and phonemic awareness. These tests suggest that there is definitely a relationship between music and brain function.

The Mozart Effect

The Mozart effect is the idea that listening to music by the composer Mozart can increase one’s intelligence and produce a short-term improvement in spatial-temporal reasoning tasks.

To prove the Mozart effect, a variety of different studies and experiments have been conducted. The results have shown that most people have a brief improvement in their visual-spatial skills after listening to Mozart. The popularized versions of the Mozart effect suggest that early childhood exposure to classical music is beneficial to mental development.

Music Therapy

Music therapy is becoming a popular way to help treat individuals suffering from memory loss, speech programs, and neurological conditions. The driving factor is that music helps prompt memory, reactivate the speech areas in the brain, and improve coordination and gait. Music therapy helps patients because it stimulates the areas of the brain that are associated with music to change and adapt.

Further research is required to completely prove that music makes people smarter, but the evidence suggesting the direct link of music and intelligence is very strong and will only get stronger over time.

Music Makes You Smarter?

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