The Mozart Effect

Sound as an environmental phenomenon has the ability to effect our lives just as much as the air we breath, yet many people don’t really think about the affect of sound on our health unless it impacts us negatively. For example we all are aware that a train passing by at a high-speed will usually cause a sound loud enough to damage our ear drums. Listening to loud music constantly over the course of years will lead to a form of ear damage called tinnitus as well as general loss of hearing. We tend to focus on the negative and ignore the blatant positive sometimes.

As we’ve discussed in several entries in this blog already, music can affect our brain in several ways and at some point I will go much deeper into the concept of entrainment (once again, for you non-regular readers, the ability to play certain frequencies of music and cause the brain to deliberately react in certain ways as depicted in EEG data :). For now, let’s accept that on a simpler level, we know the effects of certain types of music for example blues can relax us or make us reflective, and upbeat rock music can inspire us to pursue a goal aggressively. Music can make us feel an intense array of emotions such as fear or anguish to happiness and positive motivation, especially if one is attached emotionally to particular music at hand. Granted from personal standpoint, I would find it rather difficult to get attached to one of Mozart’s Sonatas (personal preference), perhaps our brain’s can detect the underlying patterns which help to organize the “musical information” better.

Less commonly considered are reflective music, inspirational music, music that just puts us to sleep and which can relax us when we feel tense. All these considerations may lead us to consider creating a music diet so to speak. Perhaps in the morning, if we want to get up earlier with a little more pep in our step we can put ona waltz or at work we can listen to highly organized music to get us focused on our task. It’s kind of like eating eggs and sausages, for breakfast and maybe a salad and a hamburger for lunch, and something heavier like pasta, for dinner, which will eventually help you in going to sleep. Personally I can think uaof worse pills to swallow than listening to music regularily throughout the day to assist your work.

The “Mozart Effect”

Don Campbell, world-famous music researcher wrote a book in 1997, based off of the 1993 study by Raucher, Shaw and Ky, called “The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Unlock the Creative Spirit”. The book itself has been used as a basis for a number of follow-up studies and follow-up products that purportedly assist in strengthening the mind with the power of classical music; e.g. the Mozart effect.

The Mozart effect is controversial in itself, since the results of the experiment that gave rise to the theory were inconsistent but promising enough to allow serious consideration. Music researchers and therapists often make a career out of studying and applying this phenomenon. Specialists refer to the power of classical music to cure or assist in the “reduction of effect” of several types of cognitive diseases, such as add, autism and dyslexia.

Whether or not here exists a so-called Mozart Effect, there are benefits to utilizing power of music in an organized fashion, e.g. in the form of a “musical diet”,to help aid your productivity throughout the day and your life. As usual I’ll be exploring this more with you in a future episode.

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