MEMORY AND LEARNING

Perhaps you’ve heard of what has popularly been coined the Mozart Effect—the idea that listening to Mozart or
other classical music enhances mental function. This has been the subject of heavy debate, and the research
surrounding it has been seriously misinterpreted in some cases. Nevertheless, there is something to it. While
listening to Mozart won’t make you an instant genius, there is evidence that listening to any music that is
personally enjoyable—be it Mozart or Madonna—can aid memory performance and concentration while studying.

ENERGY AND MOTIVATION

Need a quick pick-me-up before a marathon writing session? A stimulating song or two can boost your
drive to tackle the drudgery that awaits. How? Music engages the body’s autonomic nervous system—
which in basic terms means that at some level, music can control our physiological functions and
emotions. The right music can serve as a fantastic stimulant that will quicken the pulse, accelerate
breathing, draw away attention from fatigue and boredom, and pretty much pump you up for some
serious intellectual heavy lifting.

STRESS RELIEF

If there’s one feeling that’s universal among students of any subject, it’s stress. Thankfully, music has
been shown to be a substance-free way to diminish feelings of anxiety, anger and arousal that are the
result of stressful tasks (i.e. everything students do). Style of music does matter if you wish to experience
these benefits, but you still have some broad options from which to choose. Both classical music and
“self-selected” relaxing music—in other words, any style that an individual considers personally soothing
—have been shown to quickly calm the body and elicit more positive emotional states. So if Beethoven
doesn’t float your boat, you can always “Sail Away” with Enya, or just scour your library for something
you deem to be the appropriate soundtrack for a half hour of vegetating on the couch.

Benefits of Studying with Music

More and more, students are bringing headphones with them to libraries and study halls. But does it
actually help to listen to music when studying? While the so-called 'Mozart effect', a term coined from a
study that suggested listening to music could actually enhance intelligence, has been widely refuted,
there are still many benefits of listening to music while studying:

Music that is soothing and relaxing can help students to beat stress or anxiety while studying.

Background music may improve focus on a task by providing motivation and improving mood. During
long study sessions, music can aid endurance.

In some cases, students have found that music helps them with memorization, likely by creating a
positive mood, which indirectly boosts memory formation.

Mozart effect
The theory that listening to music, particularly classical music, makes people smarter, was developed in
the early 1990s.

It was dubbed the Mozart Effect by Dr Gordon Shaw, who conducted research on the brain capacity for
spatial reasoning.

Along with his graduate student Xiodan Leng, he developed a model of the brain and used musical notes
to represent brain activity, which resembled that of classical music notes when analysed.

This led them to test the results of classical music on college students’ brains. In 1993, he reported that a
group of college students increased their IQ levels as much as nine points as a result of listening to
Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major.”

When it was reported, the media ran with it, proclaiming that ‘classical music helps kids become
smarter’.

This led to the birth of development toys involving classical music for children, and advice to pregnant
women to place headphones on their bellies for their babies to hear classical music so that they would,
purportedly, be born smart.

The Mozart effect was later found to be misleading, and some now call it the Mozart myth.

This is due to a number of reasons. Firstly, college students were only tested on spatial intelligence,
which required them to do tasks such as folding a paper or maze-solving, which is just one type of
intelligence.

Ten years after the theory became wildly popular, a team of researchers gathered the results from
almost 40 studies conducted on the Mozart Effect, and found very little evidence that listening to
classical music really does help performance of specific tasks.

They found zero evidence that IQ levels can actually increase when listening to classical music.

Therefore, it has not been proven that listening to classical music, or any music for that matter, actually
makes a person smarter or more intelligent.

It will help you focus more

ather than distracting college students, a Stanford study found that “music moves [the] brain to pay
attention.” Researchers utilized musical compositions from the 1800s in their study, and found that
“music engages the areas of the brain involved with paying attention, making predictions and updating
the event in memory” (Baker). They believe that music choice was influential on brain processing,
revealing, “The goal of the study was to look at how the brain sorts out events, but the research also
revealed that musical techniques used by composers 200 years ago help the brain organize incoming
information” (Baker). Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven can help students categorize information, which is an
influential asset to studying.

Proven to improve brain functions

Perhaps one of the most compelling reasons to listen to music during a study session is because music is
proven to help improve cognitive performance. Basically, music helps your brain function! “Background
music may enhance performance on cognitive tasks. One older study found that listening to music
allowed test takers to complete more questions in the time allotted, and get more answers right. More
recent research suggests that whether or not music improves cognitive function depends on whether
the music first improves a person’s emotional state” (Christ). If you want to improve brain performance
while studying, evidence now shows that you must first improve your emotional state by listening to
music that you enjoy!