The Relation of Music to Intelligence according to Science
Einstein, during the discovery of his theory of relativity, on the basis of which I took the courage to make my hypothesis, reveals the role of music with the following statement; short and to the point. He said,
“It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the rest of musical perception.” - Albert Einstein on his Theory of Relativity
This is a testimony as if all his thoughts have originated from his musical perception of nature, indicating the prominent place of music in its relation to intelligence.
All in the sense of Zoltán Kodály (5)
"Music is the manifestation of the human spirit, similar to language. Its greatest practitioners have conveyed to mankind things not possible to say in any other language. If we do not want these things to remain dead treasures, we must do our utmost to make the greatest possible number of people understand their idiom."
******
1 Frames of Mind
2 http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/hawaii.htm
3 http://thinkexist.com/quotation/music_is_a_moral_law-it_gives_soul_to_the/149006.html
4 http://www.childrenofthenewearth.com/free.php?page=articles_free/global_alliance/guevara_margaret/article12
5 Zoltan Kodály was a prominent Hungarian composer, educator, ethnomusicologist, linguist, author and philosopher.
Refraining from my unprofessional interpretations and limiting my comments short, following are links, extracts, paraphrases and Quotations from the field of science concerning the conception of Intelligence and the relation of music to intelligence. (The scarce comments I may have made are all in bold italics).
Disregarding all controversies and derivatives of schools concerning intelligence and music, I have found the following five areas relevant:
I. Ancient Interpretation
II. The general intelligence factor (Spearman)
III. Multiple Intelligence (Gardner)
IV. The Mozart effect (Shaw)
V. Music and the Brain (Weinberger etc.)
I. Ancient Interpretation
Brian Capleton Phd, who is a lecturer in Piano Tuning and Technology at the Royal National College, Hereford, UK. ; and is engaged in research in the fields of piano tuning acoustics, early music, tunings and temperaments, and music philosophy; makes the following discourse on ancient interpretation of music:
http://www.amarilli.co.uk/piano/theory/ptolemy.asp
http://www.amarilli.co.uk/piano/theory/default.asp
"Ptolemy accepted Plato’s conception of the arithmetically proportioned soul, and that the effects of music on Man were due to the kinship between the “harmonics” of the soul, and the harmonic structure of musical phenomena.2[3]
Ptolemy developed an extensive astrological correlation between the heavens, music, and the human soul.3[4] ‘Harmonics’ was for Ptolemy, not merely a quantitative science, but a manifestation of a predictable, divinely ordained order.4[5] Knowledge of this ‘divine’ order he believed to be both subjective and theoretical and to be a function of nature that allows subjective perception of the divine order.5[6]
‘The power of attunement is present in all things’, states Ptolemy, ‘but is revealed most fully through human souls and through the movements in the heavens’, and thus ‘The power of harmonia is a form of the cause corresponding to reason’.6[7]
II. The General “Intelligence” conception – “g” (Spearman and Piaget )
On this theme, the free encyclopedia has the following material:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor
"An illustration of Spearman’s two-factor intelligence theory. Each small oval is a hypothetical mental test. The blue areas show the variance attributed to s, and the purple areas the variance attributed to g. "
This way of abstracting Intelligence may not be counter to my way of perception, if these eight small ovals of hypothetical tests follow the eight dimensions and axis of my harmony model.
"Charles Spearman, an early psychometrician, found that ….these correlations reflected the influence of a dominant factor, which he termed g for “general” intelligence. He developed … two factors. The first is the factor specific to an individual mental task: the individual abilities that would make a person more skilled at one cognitive task than another. The second is g, a general factor that governs performance on all cognitive tasks. Spearman’s theory proved too simple, however, as it ignored group factors in test scores (corresponding
to broad abilities such as spatial visualization, memory and verbal ability) that may also be found through factor analysis."
If I take g for the beauty of music in its highest form and let the wisdom and knowledge flow into the factor humanity from the eight dimensions of the harmony model , I see some conceptual similarities.
Intelligence expert Howard Gardner (among others) is however counter to the concept of "g":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor
“I do not believe that there is a single general talent, whether it be called intelligence, creativity or ‘g’. I do not locate talents completely within the human skull, preferring to construe all accomplishments as an interaction between cognitive potentials on the one hand, and the resources and opportunities provided by the surrounding culture on the other....”
I wonder if my suggestion is counter to this attitude since the Intelligence which I posit can individually be expressed in exceptional manifestations. I refer to Intelligence corresponding to a certain community culminating as a human culture, embodied with the eight dimensions or variables of the harmony model.
III. Multiple Intelligence, IQ and Music (Gardner) 2
According to Gardner (1999a), “Intelligence is a bio psychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value in a culture” (p.34).
http://www.indiana.edu/intell/mitheory.shtml#intro...
“…
…. Gardner (1983; 1999a) proposed and defined seven intelligences. .. Logical-mathematical intelligence …. Linguistic intelligence .... Spatial intelligence …. Musical intelligence ….. Bodily-Kinaesthetic intelligence ….Interpersonal intelligence …… Intrapersonal intelligence ...According to Gardner each of these seven “intelligences” has a specific set of abilities that can be observed and measured (1999a, 1983). More recently, Gardner (1998) has nominated three additional candidate intelligences: Naturalist, Spiritual and Existential intelligence ….”
In spite of all the differentiations based on Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Conception, the following article for promoting music education is noteworthy in respect to the effect of musical Intelligence on the rest of Intelligences signifying the central role music intelligence may play in general.
http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/yoh.htm
The Effect of Musical Intelligence on the rest of Multiple intelligences.
Music Education: The Cornerstone to Developing a Well-Rounded Individual
By: William H. Yoh, Jr.
……………
· Science - Music is a specialized science which deals with the qualities of sound, acoustics and timbre. Extensive training is given to the aural discrimination between like pitches and those that are different.
Elevation of the human mind ready for pleasure... Pleasure is a source of peace.
· Mathematics - Although it is a simplified form of arithmetic, counting in groups of two, three, four and higher are used consistently in all music repertoire. When teaching the values of rhythmic notation, we develop and reinforce the concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Developing the abstraction level of the individuals
· Geography - Music is common, but unique to every culture on Earth. Each music selection that our students present utilizes rhythmic patterns and a specified tonality. Both have their origins from other regions and countries on the globe. When performing these, we raise the awareness of the world around us.
Promotion of inter-cultural understanding and upholding diversity in harmony
· History - Through an appreciation of music, students study the great composers of the past. When musicians understand the intentions of the composer’s masterpiece, they gain insight to all historical eras. Music acts as a blueprint, testimonial, and archive to the people and the events of the Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary Eras. As musicians, we are able to experience a piece of history through a performance of a musical selection.
Music and culture with their embedded intrinsic relations, as music being the highest expression of culture
· Language Arts - When analyzing a music composition, the performer will note the relationship of the concerto/symphonic form with that of the basic essay format emphasized in writing classes. Although a simple framework, the standard exposition-developmental-recapitulation construction of music has a direct correlation with the author’s thesis statement-development-conclusion. The phrasing of the musical line in a performance has a direct relationship with the vocal inflections emphasizing portions of the basic sentence.
A somewhat direct relation to linguistic intelligence . A special and extended form of language.
· Foreign Language - The music which our ensembles perform has its inception from western European civilization. With an awareness of the terminology printed throughout the sheet music, performers gain significant knowledge in the Italian language. Depending on the selection’s difficulty and composer, German, French and Spanish terms may be introduced. As a result of the terminology, musicians understand the similarities between English and the Romantic/Germanic languages. The root words, prefixes, and suffixes located in the foreign language find their way directly into the English derivative. This goes a long way in building a strong vocabulary base, and will inevitably improve the students’ all important standardized test scores.
· Physical Education - When starting and developing the wind and vocal musician, a significant amount of time is spent on developing proper breath support and appropriate respiratory habits. Rehearsals, if properly orchestrated, are as intensive and exhaustive as jogging and swimming laps. In addition, motor skills are advanced substantially when playing percussion, woodwind, brass and string instruments. As with all sports organizations, the concepts of teamwork and cooperation are exploited in the band, orchestra and chorus setting.
Music is the universal language which establishes a common bond among all subjects and people. It evokes passionate emotions in the heart and rekindles vibrant memories of the mind. With the enormous impact that music has on every aspect of our lives, it would make sense to fervently develop and advance our music programs. Instead, excuses are made and methods are devised to remove an essential portion of the human soul
.
IV. The “Mozart Effect” (Shaw)
http://parenting-baby.com/Parenting-Baby-Music-Research/Music-Research.html
“In 1993, a physicist named Gordon Shaw and Frances Rauscher, a professional cellist and expert in cognitive development, initiated the idea of the Mozart Effect…listening to Mozart’s music has a positive effect on the human brain. The subjects used in their study were college students; these students listened to ten minutes of Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major. After listening to the music, the students were given the Stanford-Binet IQ Test. The test results showed a temporary enhancement of spatial reasoning and memory.
...
Scientists found more grey matter in the auditory cortex of the right hemisphere in musicians compared to non-musicians. They feel these differences are probably not genetic, but instead due to use and practice.
Listening to classical music, particularly Mozart has recently been thought to enhance performance on cognitive tests. Contributors to this volume take a closer look at this assertion and their findings indicate that listening to any music that is personally enjoyable has positive effects on cognition. In addition, the use of music to enhance memory is explored and research suggests that musical recitation enhances the coding of information by activating neural networks in a more united and thus more optimal fashion.”… (
Dr. Arthur Harvey of
University of Hawaii (Manoa)2 writes in his article
“ An Intelligence view of Music Education”: that ,music is "a key that may unlock the door to developing the great potential residing in the human brain. May this sampler whet your appetite to taste more from this table of knowledge."
http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/hawaii.htm
References
Armstrong, Thomas. Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom. Alexandria VA: ASCD 1994.
Barth, P. Perspectives: The Arts and School Reform, Seeking An International Perspective. Winter 1993. Council on Basic Education.
Begley, Sharon. “Your Child’s BRAIN,” Newsweek February 19, 1996. pp. 55-59.
Black, Susan. “The Musical Mind,” The American School Board Journal. January 1997. pp. 20-22.
Blakeslee, Sandra. “The Mystery of Music: How it Works in the Brain,” The New York Times: Science Times. May 16, 1995.
Colwell, Richard and Lyle Davidson. “Music Intelligence and the Benefits of Music Education,” NAASP Bulletin. November 1996. pp. 55-64.
Cutietta, Robert; Harmann, Donald and Linda Miller Walker. Spin-Offs. The Extra-Musical Advantages of a Music Education. Elkhart, IN. United Musical Instruments, 1995.
Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind. New York: Basic Books. 1983.
Giles, Martha Mead. “A Little Background Music, Please,” Principal. November 1991.
Giles, Martha Mead. “A Music and Art Program to Promote Emotional Health in Elementary School Children,” Journal of Music Therapy. XXVIII (3) 1991. pp. 135-148.
Keister, Edwin Jr.; and Keister, Sally Valente. “You Can Raise Your Child’s IQ,” Readers Digest. October 1996.
Langstaff, John and Elizabeth Mayer. “Music: Exercise for the Brain,” Learning. March/April 1996.
Rauscher, Frances; Gordon L. Shaw, and Katherine Ky. “Music and Spatial Task Performance,” Nature. October 14, 1993.
Shreeve, James. “Music of the Hemispheres,” Discover. October 1996. pp. 90-100.
Weinberger, N.M. “Sing, Sing, Sing,” MUSICA Research Notes. Volume III, Issue II, Fall 1996.
WuDunn, Sheryl. “A Lot of Japanese are Making a Lot of Music,” The New York Times International. May 15, 1996.
V. Music and the Brain
Dr. Arthur Harvey of
University of Hawaii (Manoa) points further, in his article
“ An Intelligence view of Music Education”: that ,
…. on MUSIC AND THE BRAIN, it is exciting to see the current and expanding interest in music and the brain from a variety of perspectives as represented in the following selected publications:
...June 11, 1990 U.S. News and World Report “The Musical Brain”.
...May 16, 1995 The New York Times: Science Times “The Mystery of Music: How IT Works in the Brain”.
...February 19, 1996 Newsweek “Your Child’s BRAIN: How Kids are Wired for Music, Math & Emotions.
...March/April 1996 Learning “Music: Exercise for the Brain.”
...August 1996 Parents Magazine “Does Music Make Babies Smart?”.
...September 17, 1996 Family Circle “5 WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR MUSIC IQ.”
...October 1996 Discover “Music of the Hemispheres.”
...January 1997 The American School Board Journal “The Musical Mind”.
http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/hawaii.htm
1. How does music affect one’s intellect?
"Music is said …specifically.. to affect infants more than any other age group. Music can improve learning skills, test taking skills, concentration, heartbeat, and relaxation. …
...
"… These studies show that early learning experiences determine which neurons will connect with other neurons and which ones will die off. Connections between neurons (synaptic connections) are largely related to adult intelligence. They increase at the fastest rate during the first six years of a human life. Music training is said to develop synaptic connections that are related to abstract thought. …..
The right hemisphere of a human brain serves to process information in a spontaneous or intuitive way.
Why? Infants are, I think , free of all spiritual and social constraints, the direct embodiment of their own spirits, manifesting harmony at the individual level. Due to the relation of quality of music to Intelligence, which is also a source of pleasure by its own, the effect of music on infants is self-evident.
"… These studies show that early learning experiences determine which neurons will connect with other neurons and which ones will die off. Connections between neurons (synaptic connections) are largely related to adult intelligence. They increase at the fastest rate during the first six years of a human life. Music training is said to develop synaptic connections that are related to abstract thought. …..
The right hemisphere of a human brain serves to process information in a spontaneous or intuitive way.
http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/hawaii.htm
http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/growing.htm
"For example, the way in which a person responds to the art of music is a form of an intuitive process of thinking. The left hemisphere of a human brain functions to process information in a linear or sequential way. Learning subjects such as Math or English are prime examples of this process. After using a brain scanning technique, scientists discovered that musicians had a 25% enlargement in the area of response in the right side of the brain. This enlargement was greater for musicians who began studying music at young ages. New born babies tend to use the right hemisphere before the left; they react to pitch and visual changes instantly before reacting to counting or words. Therefore, babies are exposed to music and rhymes. ."
2. Music Increases Intelligence
http://www.tomleemusic.ca/main/academy.cfm?id=103
“Music stimulates the mind, encourages creativity and helps to lay a foundation for learning that leads to higher intelligence and aptitude...
"Plato once said “...music is a more potent instrument than any other for education...” now scientists know why. Music , they believe, trains the brain for higher forms of thinking. After eight months of musical training, 3 year olds were expert puzzle masters, scoring 80% higher than their playmates did in spatial intelligence-the ability to visualize the world accurately. This skill later translates into mathematica/conceptual and engineering skills.”
3. Leadership and the Musical Mind
http://www.weforum.org/en/events/annualmeeting/Interactive%20Programme/index.htm?id=16551
Daniel J. Levitin, "In search of the Musical Mind", reiterates:
" I believe the study of music is of central importance to cognitive science, because music is the most complex of human activities, involving perception, memory, timing, object grouping, attention, and – in the case of performance – expertice and complec coordination of motor action. Conesequently, the scientific study of music hat the potentioal to answer fundamental questions, about the nature of human thought and the relations among experience, mind, brain and genes......"
In search of the musical Mind. By Daniel J. Levitin, Ph. D.
From Cerebrum: The Danan Forum on Brain Science..Vol w, Number 4, Fall 2000
http://www.dana.org/pdf/specialpublications/cerebrum_levitin.pdf
4. “Music and the Mind"...
Arts related to culture and specially Music as presented by Dee Dickinson
http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/dickins.htm
"Why are the Arts Important?
1.They are languages that all people speak—that cut across racial, cultural, social, educational, and economic barriers and enhance cultural appreciation and awareness.
2.They are symbol systems as important as letters and numbers.
3.They integrate mind, body, and spirit.
4.They provide opportunities for self-expression, bringing the inner world into the outer world of concrete reality.
5.They offer the avenue to “flow states” and peak experiences.
6.They create a seamless connection between motivation, instruction, assessment, and practical application—leading to “deep understanding.”
7.They make it possible to experience processes from beginning to end.
8.They develop both independence and collaboration.
9.They provide immediate feedback and opportunities for reflection.
10. They make it possible to use personal strengths in meaningful ways and to bridge into understanding sometimes difficult abstractions through these strengths.
11.They merge the learning of process and content.
12.They improve academic achievement—enhancing test scores, attitudes, social skills, critical and creative thinking.
13.They exercise and develop higher order thinking skills including analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and “problem-finding.”
14.They are essential components of any alternative assessment program.
15.They provide the means for every student to learn.
"MacLean points out that the limbic system is so powerful that it can literally facilitate or inhibit learning and higher order thinking. It appears that positive emotions, such as love, tenderness, and humor, can facilitate higher order thinking skil ls; whereas negative emotions, such as anger, hostility, and fear, can literally downshift the brain to basic survival thinking.
5. Music and the Brain
NORMAN M. WEINBERGER, who received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Case Western Reserve University, works in the department of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California, Irvine. He is a founder of U.C.I.’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and of MuSICA (Music and Science Information Computer Archive). A pioneer in the field of learning and memory in the auditory system, Weinberger is on the editorial board of Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and Music Perception.
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0007D716-71A1-1179-AF8683414B7F0000
http://www.dbc.uci.edu/neurobio/Faculty/Weinberger/weinberger.htm
http://www.house.gov/ed_workforce/hearings/106th/ecyf/esea71599/weinberger.htm
Weinberger inquires: Here is a rather lengthy paraphrase of his discourse...
"What is the secret of music’s strange power? Seeking an answer, scientists are piecing together a picture of what happens in the brains of listeners and musicians....
…..Why is music—universally beloved and uniquely powerful in its ability to wring emotions—so pervasive and important to us?
"Neuroscientists don’t yet have the ultimate answers. But in recent years we have begun to gain a firmer understanding of where and how music is processed in the brain, which should lay a foundation for answering evolutionary questions. Collectively, studies of patients with brain injuries and imaging of healthy individuals have unexpectedly uncovered no specialized brain “center” for music. Rather music engages many areas distributed throughout the brain, including those that are normally involved in other kinds of cognition.
…..
==> Inner Songs
…
... more recent work has yielded a more nuanced understanding, relating to two of the features that music and language share: both are a means of communication, and each has a syntax, a set of rules that govern the proper combination of elements (notes and words, respectively). According to Aniruddh D. Patel of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, imaging findings suggest that a region in the frontal lobe enables proper construction of the syntax of both music and language, whereas other parts of the brain handle related aspects of language and music processing.
….. Like other sensory systems, the one for hearing is arranged hierarchically, consisting of a string of neural processing stations from the ear to the highest level, the auditory cortex. The processing of sounds, such as musical tones, begins with the inner ear (cochlea), which sorts complex sounds produced by, say, a violin, into their constituent elementary frequencies. The cochlea then transmits this information along separately tuned fibers of the auditory nerve as trains of neural discharges. Eventually these trains reach the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe. ……
The response to music per se, though, is more complicated. Music consists of a sequence of tones, and perception of it depends on grasping the relationships between sounds. Many areas of the brain are involved in processing the various components of music. Consider tone, which encompasses both the frequencies and loudness of a sound…..
But in the late 1980s Thomas M. McKenna and I, working in my laboratory at the University of California at Irvine, raised doubts about that notion when we studied contour, which is the pattern of rising and falling pitches that is the basis for all melodies. …… These findings show that the pattern of a melody matters: processing in the auditory system is not like the simple relaying of sound in a telephone or stereo system.
Although most research has focused on melody, rhythm (the relative lengths and spacing of notes), harmony (the relation of two or more simultaneous tones) and timbre (the characteristic difference in sound between two instruments playing the same tone) are also of interest. Studies of rhythm have concluded that one hemisphere is more involved, although they disagree on which hemisphere. The problem is that different tasks and even different rhythmic stimuli can demand different processing capacities. For example, the left temporal lobe seems to process briefer stimuli than the right temporal lobe and so would be more involved when the listener is trying to discern rhythm while hearing briefer musical sounds.
The situation is clearer for harmony. Imaging studies of the cerebral cortex find greater activation in the auditory regions of the right temporal lobe when subjects are focusing on aspects of harmony. Timbre also has been “assigned” a right temporal lobe preference. Patients whose temporal lobe has been removed (such as to eliminate seizures) show deficits in discriminating timbre if tissue from the right, but not the left, hemisphere is excised. In addition, the right temporal lobe becomes active in normal subjects when they discriminate between different timbres.
Brain responses also depend on the experiences and training of the listener. Even a little training can quickly alter the brain’s reactions. For instance, until about 10 years ago, scientists believed that tuning was “fixed” for each cell in the auditory cortex. Our studies on contour, however, made us suspect that cell tuning might be altered during learning so that certain cells become extra sensitive to sounds that attract attention and are stored in memory. "
Learning retunes the brain, so that more cells respond best to behaviorally important sounds.
===> Well-Developed Brains
Studies of musicians have extended many of the findings noted above, dramatically confirming the brain’s ability to revise its wiring in support of musical activities. Just as some training increases the number of cells that respond to a sound when it becomes important, prolonged learning produces more marked responses and physical changes in the brain. Musicians, who usually practice many hours a day for years, show such effects—their responses to music differ from those of nonmusicians; they also exhibit hyperdevelopment of certain areas in their brains.
Christo Pantev, then at the University of Münster in Germany, led one such study in 1998. He found that when musicians listen to a piano playing, about 25 percent more of their left-hemisphere auditory regions respond than do so in nonmusicians. This effect is specific to musical tones and does not occur with similar but nonmusical sounds. Moreover, the authors found that this expansion of response area is greater the younger the age at which lessons began. Studies of children suggest that early musical experience may facilitate development. In 2004 Antoine Shahin, Larry E. Roberts and Laurel J. Trainor of McMaster University in Ontario recorded brain responses to piano, violin and pure tones in four- and five-year-old children. Youngsters who had received greater exposure to music in their homes showed enhanced brain auditory activity, comparable to that of unexposed kids about three years older.
Musicians may display greater responses to sounds, in part because their auditory cortex is more extensive. Peter Schneider and his co-workers at the University of Heidelberg in Germany reported in 2002 that the volume of this cortex in musicians was 130 percent larger. The percentages of volume increase were linked to levels of musical training, suggesting that learning music proportionally increases the number of neurons that process it.
….. In contrast, they observed no enlargement of the areas of the cortex that handle inputs from the right hand, which controls the bow and requires no special finger movements. …..
Other studies suggest that the actual size of the motor cortex, as well as that of the cerebellum—a region at the back of the brain involved in motor coordination—is greater in musicians.
===> Ode to Joy—or Sorrow
…. Underscoring those surveys was the result of a 1997 study by Carol L. Krumhansl of Cornell University. She and her co-workers recorded heart rate, blood pressure, respiration and other physiological measures during the presentation of various pieces that were considered to express happiness, sadness, fear or tension. Each type of music elicited a different but consistent pattern of physiological change across subjects.
….. From this case we learn that the temporal lobe is needed to comprehend melody but not to produce an emotional reaction, which is both subcortical and involves aspects of the frontal lobes.
……
Overall, findings to date indicate that music has a biological basis and that the brain has a functional organization for music. It seems fairly clear, even at this early stage of inquiry, that many brain regions participate in specific aspects of music processing, whether supporting perception (such as apprehending a melody) or evoking emotional reactions. Musicians appear to have additional specializations, particularly hyper development of some brain structures. These effects demonstrate that learning retunes the brain, increasing both the responses of individual cells and the number of cells that react strongly to sounds that become important to an individual. As research on music and the brain continues, we can anticipate a greater understanding not only about music and its reasons for existence but also about how multifaceted it really is.
Music and the Brain (by Laurence O'Donnell)
Laurence O’Donnell III is a musicist (he plays the bassoon) from Perth, Scotland. He has created a site named Music Power. This paper was produced as a result of his senior paper.
http://users.characterlink.net/odonnell/outline.html
“Music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it even if we so desired” (Boethius cited by Storr).
….. A friend of Einstein, G.J. Withrow, said that the way Einstein figured out his problems and equations was by improvising on the violin.
If this is realy true, it indicates a lot, specially together with "Mystery Mozart" and the message of "the Magic flute" !
===> Bodily Responses to Music
... Music is thought to link all of the emotional, spiritual, and physical elements of the universe. …..
Responses to music are easy to be detected in the human body.
Classical music from the baroque period causes the heart beat and pulse rate to relax to the beat of the music. As the body becomes relaxed and alert, the mind is able to concentrate more easily. Furthermore, baroque music decreases blood pressure and enhances the ability to learn.
Music affects the amplitude and frequency of brain waves, which can be measured by an electro-encephalogram. Music also affects breathing rate and electrical resistance of the skin. It has been observed to cause the pupils to dilate, increase blood pressure, and increase the heart rate.
===> The Power of Music on Memory and Learning
The power of music to affect memory is quite intriguing. Mozart’s music and baroque music, with a 60 beats per minute beat pattern, activate the left and right brain. The simultaneous left and right brain action maximizes learning and retention of information. …...
….. see the learning tools of the Bulgarian psychologist, Dr. George Lozanov, ...
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n15/mente/musica.html
Due to these facts....
http://www.memoryskills.com.au/page%20six.htm
The top three schools in America all place a great emphasis on music and the arts. Hungary, Japan, and the Netherlands, the top three academic countries in the world, all place a great emphasis on music education and participation in music. The top engineers from Silicon Valley are all musicians.
Donnel quotes Napoleon to have said the following: “Give me control over he who shapes the music of a nation, and I care not who makes the laws”.
http://users.characterlink.net/odonnell/outline.html
===> Healthy and Not So Healthy Effects
………
An Australian physician and psychiatrist, Dr. John Diamond, found a direct link between muscle strength/weakness and music. He discovered that all of the muscles in the entire body go weak when subjected to the “stopped anapestic beat” of music from hard rock musicians, including Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Queen, The Doors, Janis Joplin, Bachman - Turner Overdrive, and The Band. Dr. Diamond found another effect of the anapestic beat. He called it a “switching” of the brain. ….
===> On Animals and Plants, Too!
Tests on the effects of music on living organisms besides humans have shown that special pieces of music (including The Blue Danube) aid hens in laying more eggs. Music can also help cows to yield more milk. Researchers from Canada and the former Soviet Union found that wheat will grow faster when exposed to special ultrasonic and musical sounds. Rats were tested by psychologists to see how they would react to Bach’s music and rock music. The rats were placed into two different boxes. Rock music was played in one of the boxes while Bach’s music was played in the other box. The rats could choose to switch boxes through a tunnel that connected both boxes. Almost all of the rats chose to go into the box with the Bach music even after the type of music was switched from one box to the other.
..
To Know More
· Ballam, Michael. Music and the Mind (Documentation Related to Message). pp 1-8.
· Jourdain, Robert. Music, the Brain and Ecstasy. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.,1997.
· Lundin, Robert W. An Objective Psychology of Music. Malabar: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1985.
· Neverman. “The Affects of Music on the Mind.” 3 pp. On-line. Internet. 20 December 1999. Available WWW: http://www.powell.k12.ky.us/pchs/ publications/Affects_of_Music.html.
· Scarantino, Barbara Anne. Music Power Creative Living Through the Joys of Music. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1987.
· Storr, Anthony. Music and the Mind. New York: The Free Press, 1992.
· Weinberger, N.M. “Threads of Music in the Tapestry of Memory.” MuSICA Research Notes 4.1 (Spring 1997): 3pp. On-line. Internet. 13 November 1999. Available WWW: http://musica.ps.uci.edu/mrn/V4I1S97.html#threads.
===> Mystery Music and Mozart
Mozart’s musical gifts were rare, if not unique, but in many important ways his talents clearly mark him out as one of us, because the capacity to appreciate and make music is a universal human trait.
Whether it’s Mozart, or the songs of humpback whales, or something from the Hottest 100, there is no question that music has a powerful allure. But the question of why we enjoy music is one that is proving difficult to answer, despite being asked by a great diversity of scientists and thinkers.
....
===> Musical lizard brain (Evolution)
"Some researchers take the next step and say an ear for music goes back much further than Homo sapiens. As evidence they point to neurological studies of the human brain as it responds to music. PET scans of people listening to music have confirmed what many music lovers already know, that music elicits a response in that part of the brain that deals with our emotions.
....
As a recent issue of Scientific American pointed out, our emotional nerve centre - the limbic system - is an evolutionarily ancient part of our brain, and one which we share with much of the animal kingdom. Our limbic system’s response to music suggests that there is a deep evolutionary significance in our musical behaviour. As Patricia Gray, head of the Biomusic program at the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S. suggests, it seems that the roots of human music lie much closer to our “lizard brain” than to our more recent reasoning cortex. She proposes that music has a more ancient origin even than human language.
This accounts only for its direct relation, exonential relation to intelligence..
...humans and whales last shared a twig on the family tree 60 million years ago. Patricia Gray suggests (if whales could sing..) that this makes humans not the inventors of music, but rather latecomers to the party.
The point is not the late coming but the the human intelligence achieved through the development of music and culture ..
"Another idea is that music conferred an evolutionary advantage by promoting social cohesion among groups. Singing, dancing and banging drums around the campfire may have been a powerful social glue, giving the participants a sense of community. The stronger the bonds, goes the theory, the better the survival rate of members of the group.
Or perhaps music is a mind game designed to train us to think creatively and find patterns in our surroundings. The human skill at pattern recognition, which has clear evolutionary advantages because it helps us understand and make predictions about our world, might have been honed over the years by making and listening to music.
===> Music and Emotions
...violent lyrics in songs increase aggression-related thoughts and emotions and could indirectly create a more hostile social environment, according to a U.S. a study released ...
Five experiments were conducted by researchers from Iowa State University and the Texas Department of Human Services. They examined the effects of seven violent songs by seven artists and eight non-violent songs by seven artists on 500 college students.
The violent songs increased feelings of hostility without provocation or threat, according to the study. It said the effect was not the result of differences in musical style, specific performing artist or arousal properties of the songs. Even the humorous violent songs increased aggressive thoughts.
The group said the study contradicts a popular notion that listening to angry, violent music actually serves as a positive catharsis for people. The results appear in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
....researchers said repeated exposure to violent lyrics could indirectly create a more hostile social environment, they said it was possible the effects of violent songs may last only a fairly short time.
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Conclusion
I claim that the quality of Music interpreted as the development of high human culture can be taken to be the prominent factor of cumulated social Intelligence as expressed in the harmony model I drafted. This Intelligence is the dynamic factor which moves the social entity- the community as well as the individual, as the ultimate carrier of this Intelligence analogous to the atomic Energy of matter as expressed by Einsteins’s theory of relativity. The quality of music lying as a potential module deep in every individual minds of a community, with one or the other endowed or culturally cultivated to make use of it in its human development towards its own harmonious existence, individually or in the community at large. At the Individual level Dr. Lousie Montello’s work on “Essential Musical Intelligence” may be one of the synthesis, which makes a lot of sense for me along the harmony hypothesis I made.
http://www.essentialmusicalintelligence.com/aboutint.htm
"EMI, Essential Musical Intelligence, is a force associated with the life of the soul that is present in all people at birth. EMI can be observed in the way that an infant spontaneously uses sound and melody to soothe herself, or by a toddler as he asserts his emerging identity by creating improvised songs. It is the driving force behind the phenomenal talent of the musical prodigy and the idiot savant. And it is an important catalyst for emotional development in teenagers and young adults.
Somewhere along the way, however, many of us lose our connection with EMI. Each time our belief in our own creative abilities is undermined in some way, especially during our childhood years, we lose a little spirit, which is the wind beneath the wings of EMI. People whose lives are all work and no play are cut off from EMI because they have not allowed themselves the time to just be - to look within and explore the imagined and archetypal realms outside of ordinary consciousness. Even some professional musicians, forced from an early age to give up the joy and freedom of “just playing,” maintain an ambivalent relationship with music which can impede their access to EMI.
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As you begin to embrace EMI, you will naturally become more responsible in exercising your free will to literally create your own reality. Through connecting with EMI, you will learn how to discriminate between things you have manifested that are in alignment with your soul’s path and those that limit your personal growth and freedom of expression. In this state of self-realization, EMI will prevail."
Dr. Louise Montello
Regarding Essential Musical Intelligence
Using Music as Your Path to Healing, Creativity and Radiant Wholeness
From the scientist of the century, my last one from the list of my "nice quotations":
"The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religion." - Albert Einstein
....At the center of true Faith.
