Send to a Friend

mattbrowne's avatar

Can unintelligent music dull (young) people's minds and senses?

Asked by mattbrowne (31732points) May 3rd, 2009

There is some research showing that certain kinds of music can boost intelligence and social behavior. What about the reverse effect? Is there music that makes people more stupid? Here’s an interesting article:

Can music really help you think better? Yes, according to the research that has been done so far. Listening to, and participating in music creates new neural pathways in your brain that stimulate creativity. Studies have shown that music actually trains the brain for higher forms of thinking. There was a study at the University of California, for example, about 10 years ago.

Researchers followed the progress of three year olds, split into two groups. The first group had no particular training in, or exposure to music. The second group studied piano and sang daily in chorus. After eight months the musical three year olds were much better at solving puzzles. When tested, they also scored 80% higher in spatial intelligence than the non musical group. With such a dramatic difference, there is bound to be more research like this in the future.

There is also anectdotal evidence that listening to music, especially from Mozart’s era, can help you study and learn better. Hopefully there will be research done to confirm or disprove this soon, but there is really no good reason not to do your own experimentation in this area. Stephen King writes with loud rock music playing, so maybe any benefits here are according to your own tastes or brain-organization.

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/11-22-2005-82052.asp

Using Fluther

or

Using Email

Separate multiple emails with commas.
We’ll only use these emails for this message.