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ChrisSalter
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« Reply #17 on: October 23, 2010, 12:21:00 AM » |
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Reposting this from another thread, because it seems relevant.
You are right, the Mozart Effect with listening has been largely discredited or attributable to be within the "margin of error" range of testing. That being said, it is still great music!
What has stood out however is PLAYING music, especially keyboard, leads to profound increases, according to Harvard, 30 to 40 percent increases in math and spatial skills. Other studies cite new memory cells in children with 4 months or more of piano, better SATs, social skills, and one citation claimed that while less than 10% of Oxford grads had formal music training, they accounted for 73% of the awards.
My belief is that the piano has such profound effects because of several factors:
A) Left and right brain
B) The brain is not isolated organ, it is intimately connected to the nervous system, and the hands have a much denser concentration of nerve endings.
C) The keyboardist must play melody, harmony and rhythm together, while a flutist plays and reads only the melody (rhythm embedded of course).
D) Music notation, if you stretch it out into durations for each note, looks and functions like a Gant chart, for project management. In other words, the kids are parallel processing, like advanced project management on the fly.
This implies that they somehow tap into the subconscious mode of learning, which is parallel, not linear like language.
I think we will find we are at the very beginning of understanding the profound effects playing music can have on the brain, the psyche and development of children.
Now I am going back to listening to Mozart, whether it helps my brain or not. I believe it can't hurt!
Thanks
Chris
Also, I recommend Pandora for web or Iphone listening, it is highly interactive and can help you explore genres of great music easily. There is a free and a paid version, and it has brought me amazing new discoveries even in genres of music I thought I knew well.
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