In the early 1990s, Dr Frances Rauscher and colleagues at the University of California’s centre for neurobiology of learning and memory, in Irvine, the US, conducted a study in which 36 undergraduates from the psychology department scored eight to nine points higher on a spatial IQ test after listening to 10 minutes of Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major”.

The effect only lasted 10 to 15 minutes, but the team concluded that the relationship between music and spatial ability was so strong that listening to music could improve performance. Gordon Shaw, one of the researchers, said Mozart’s music might “warm up” the brain. “We suspect that complex music facilitates certain complex neuronal patterns involved in high-brain activities like math and chess,” he said.

The Tomatis effect

The team conducted further research on preschool children given piano training – particularly those learning basic melodies by Mozart and Beethoven. The infants showed dramatic improvements of up to a third in spatial and temporal tasks. And the effects lasted for up to a day.

These initial breakthroughs brought the therapeutic and stimulatory power of music to the world’s attention. But it was the research in the 1960s by French physician Dr Alfred Tomatis that provided the foundations for many therapists at work today. He once said, “The vocal nourishment that the mother provides to her child is just as important to the child’s development as her milk.”

Dr Tomatis investigated the role of sound in utero, to see if postnatal development problems, such as autism and speech and language disorders could be linked to trauma in the womb. Against medical opinion, he posited that the fetus was able to hear and react to low-frequency sounds, similar to the calls and rustling of an African bush at twilight, and that the mother’s voice was particularly important.

Maternal Mozart

Suspecting that a breakdown in this “audiovocal circuit” was linked to childhood disorders he set about recreating the auditory environment within the womb, says Don Campbell, a classical musician and author of the book “The Mozart Effect”.

Dr Tomatis noticed amazing results when playing the sounds to autistic children for example, helping them to be “born” again in an auditory sense. Writing in his autobiography “The Conscious Ear”, he said he also used Mozart in the preparatory phase, because, “Mozart is a very good mother”.

Medicinal music

Patrick de la Roque, a clinical psychologist at the Listening Centre in London, which uses the Tomatis method, says the therapy draws on the essential difference between hearing and listening. He says, “You may be able to hear perfectly well, and still have very poor listening skills.”

He uses a machine based on Dr Tomatis’ work to help treat children with developmental disorders including dyslexia, dyspraxia, epilepsy and even attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. “This device filters out the sound in such a way that the muscles of the ear are either resting or working, providing a gymnastics of the ear, if you want, to enhance our listening skills,” he says.

And the type of music can make a difference. Patrick prefers Baroque classical music. “Dr Tomatis investigated which music gives the best results, and he found Mozart and Gregorian chants were best,” he says.

Clever melodies

But why is this? In his research with undergraduates, Gordon Shaw said he thought the complexity of Mozart’s music had affected the brain in a particular way. “Simple and repetitive music could have the opposite effect,” he said.

Patrick says it’s down to brain patterns. “Dr Tomatis believed music is based on our neurology – our biological rhythms – and the different elements in music – the rhythm, the structure and intellectual-mathematical side of music, pertains to the proper functioning of neurons,” he says.

“Our biological system obeys a law of harmony. So when music is based on these laws of harmony, it has a good effect on you. Mozart can re-pattern your system, making harmony of the chaos caused by stress.”

Patrick points out that the vestibular system in the ear controls the sense of balance, co-ordination and sense of gravity, and developing this system can therefore help children with poor balance, dyspraxia and many other conditions.

He says it’s rather like a bag of Lego™. “At birth, you’ve got all the elements, but they have to be connected properly,” he says. And it seems classical music could help put the blocks together.

But as soon as kids are old enough, they may have their own ideas about what music is best for stimulating their young minds, and you can guarantee that whatever they choose it’ll be anything but what the doctor ordered.

Further information:

The Listening Centre
www.listeningcentre.co.uk 

“The Mozart Effect”, Don Campbell

© Health Media Ltd 2002
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