Does Classical Music Have an Effect on Infants' Brain Development?

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Does Classical Music Have an Effect on Infants' Brain Development?

In 1998, Zell Miller, the governor of the state of Georgia, started a new program that distributed free CDs with classical music to the parents of every newborn baby in Georgia. Why did he do this? He certainly was not just trying to be nice and win a political statement; instead, his idea came from a new line of research showing a link between listening to classical music and enhanced brain development in infants. (1) So, what evidence was there for this governor to make a $105,000 proposal to give classical music for the newborn babies? I considered how my sister and I took music lessons, the Suzuki method, since we were 7 or 8 years old, and how my mother always had classical music playing in the house. My mother was convinced that musical ability will not only help us to be more well rounded people, but also that it will help us to be smarter individuals. Did all those years of piano lessons really pay off? Did all that money spent on buying classical music and attending classical concerts really play a role in determining where my sister and I are in our education?

Previous to this initiative by Gov. Miller, many researchers probed at the question of whether or not classical music enhanced intelligence. One of the initial experiments used musical selections by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to test for improvements in memory and this idea thus became known as the "Mozart Effect". The original experiment was published in 1993 by scientists at the University of California at Irvine. College students were required to listen to ten minutes of Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D major, a relaxation tape, or silence. Immediately after listening to these selec...

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...ied Gruhn - Brain Research - Forschung und Lehre, Article published in European Music Journal.

http://www.music-journal.com/htm/forsch/gruhn/gruhn1.htm

4)Biology 202 Lecture Notes , on the Serendip web site.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro03/notes.html

5)Music Training and the Brain, in the Society for Neuroscience web site.

http://web.sfn.org/content/Publications/BrainBriefings/music_training_and_brain.htm

6) M.I.N.D. Institute's site for research papers.

http://www.mindinstitute.net/errors/404.php

7)Music and Memory and Intelligence.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/music.html

8)The Effects of Music and the Brain, web site on the value of music education.

http://www.twinblues.com/irv.htm

9)Therapeutic Options: Effects of Music on the Brain, Lost & Found, Journal on Autism.

http://www.autismwebsite.com/lost&found/music.htm

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