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THE MOZART EFFECT: WHAT IS IT? IS IT REAL?
“Listening to Mozart makes you smarter,” was the claim. The “Mozart effect” became a fad.
The governors of a couple of American states requested the issuing of Mozart CDs to all new mothers. One entrepreneur cashed in on the craze with a book and series of recordings.
It started in the early 90's when a team of researchers published findings that indicated spatial and temporal abilities improved in subjects after passive exposure to music composed by Mozart. Other researchers could not replicate the findings. Further research found that the so-called Mozart effect had nothing to do with Mozart’s music, but could be replicated with any stimulus of the subject’s preference (e.g., a narrated story, or some other music).
However, if a child begins creating and learning music actively at a young age, the brain responds by allocating more neural matter to musical processing than the child would have if he or she did not actively study and learn music. As well, research indicates that children from inner-city backgrounds who get ongoing, long-term musical instruction through projects such as MusicLink (www.MusicLinkFoundation.org) do much better than their disadvantaged circumstances would otherwise predict.