y begin to relax. Stress melts away as they are taken in by the

beauty of the music. Sound familiar? Probably, since all of us at one time or another have used music as a medium for relaxation. But scientifically speaking, how exactly does music help us re

were given piano and singing lessons for 8 months performed much better at completing mazes and piecing together puzzles than the other children. In a separate study, preschoolers who listened to classical music tended to score higher on IQ tests. The list goes on and on, and everyday new evidence arises that reinforces this belief. What causes this dramatic improvement in reading, reasoning, and spatial skills? Experts in cognitive development, commonly referred to as "brain scientists", believe that when children listen to music, they must order the notes in their brain to forming melodies. They think that tests in spatial reasoning, such as putting together a puzzle, require the same reasoning skills. And since music is so mathematically oriented (8 notes in an octave, 2 beats in a half-note, etc.), experts speculate that by listening to music, children are exercising the same part of the brain that handles mathematics, logic, and higher level reasoning. Dr. Frances H. Rau!

deeper meaning to music that we cannot begin to imagine. As Richard Knox

23 April 1994, pp.260. Bradshaw, David. Music and Its Effect on the Brain

River Elementary work. According to a yet-to-be-published study, a group

our ability to speak and from these results, Frackowiak believes that this area

by music. "Brain areas involved in hearing, recall, and even vision -

programs there. In 1984, Pratt founded Music Resource International in

children three-and-a-half to five years old. As the children become more

scanners, scientists are finally able to see the human brain work in detail. The

scher, PhD, a research psychologist at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at UC Irvine, agrees. "By exercising these brain patterns through music early in life," she says, "[I] think it's going to have an effect on your abstract reasoning throughout life." (Learning 24) Thus, by exposing your child to classical music as early as the age of 1, you may be helping his future logic, mathematical, and reasoning skills. However, researchers warn that listening to music won't make your child a genius. "Just listening to music presumably isn't going to make you smarter in the long run," cautions Dr. Shaw (Learning 24) Most experts also agree that children raised in a loving environment will get all the stimuli they need for healthy development. While this means that you shouldn't force-feed Mozart to your two-year-old, it

emphasis on the process of music learning. Pratt believes that music taught

Zatorre and his colleagues are exploring what parts of the brain are stimulated

to music requires] a network of specialized area, out of the coordinated

researcher at all. He doesn't have a PhD and doesn't work at a university.

study conducted at the Institute of Neurology in London, clinical

Some common words found in the essay are:
Piper Hamelin, Medical Journal, Kindermusik Child, Gordon Shaw, Richard Frackowiak, A6 Music's, Robert Zatorre, Elementary According, MRI PET, UC Irvine, music brain, online available, listening music, human brain, brain research, music appreciation, music brain research, kindermusik program, classical music, music learning, human mind, music's affect children, brain grad project, effect brain grad, music effect brain,
Approximate Word count = 3198
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)