Education Matters:

I’m sometimes skeptical of sentences that begin with, “Studies have shown,” or “Polls indicate” or “clinical experiments confirm” because they are so easily manipulated to conform to a particular point of view or bias. (Think “______ News” — your choice.)

Nevertheless, I’d like to offer a “research indicates” that is free of special interest, has no political motive or ax to grind — just an interesting finding that has even more interesting applications in my profession. It has to do with the power of music; in particular, classical music.

At a clinical level, laboratory rats that listen to Mozart seem to get smarter. Compared with other rats that listened to heavy metal, they navigated a maze nearly four times faster. Other tests on the effects of music on living organisms besides humans have shown that special pieces of music (like, for instance, “The Blue Danube”) aid hens in laying more eggs and cows in yielding more milk. Researchers from Canada and the former Soviet Union found that wheat grows faster when exposed to special ultrasonic and musical sounds.

A few years ago, I saw a television documentary about the effects of music on plants. The experimenters set up two terrariums, each containing a variety of plants, and each connected to an audio speaker. Into one terrarium they played classical music, and into the other they played hard rock music. After a time, the plants exposed to the classical music leaned toward the speaker; but, the plants exposed to hard rock music leaned away from the speaker.

Other human studies have consistently shown a link between musical training (especially classical) and higher benchmark and scholastic aptitude test scores. The difference is attributed to the “Mozart Effect,” which has some researchers concluding that exposure to classical music, even for short periods, has beneficial effects on intelligence.

Deep in the brain there is a band of fibers connecting the two hemispheres that, according to scientific studies, grow in size when the brain is exposed to classical music. This increase in size also increases the communication between the two halves of the brain, which in turn increases learning efficiency.