ESCALANTE VERA CELSO ANDRÉ

“Does music make you smarter” is a very vague form of a complicated question. Music
of all varieties has been shown to generate health benefits for the mind and body.
Listening to music can lower blood pressure, induce relaxation, reduce anxiety and even
increase your libido. Some have asserted that music, particularly classical music, can
boost cognitive function. Does classical music generate brain responses that other forms
of music do not? On this subject, in my opinion it can induce a higher concentration, but
does not make you smarter for the following reason:

Firstly: In 1998, a study by Rideout, Dougherty, and Wernert replicated the effect of
exposure to Mozart’s sonata on spatial reasoning task performance. In this study, 16
students listened to Mozart’s sonata, and another group of 16 students listening to
contemporary music. Before and after listening to music, each group completed a spatial
reasoning task, and results showed that participants in both conditions showed
improvement on the task.

Secondly: While there is no evidence that musicians are any more intelligent as a result of
playing an instrument or singing, it is true that the musicians’ brains have been changed for
the better for example their love and dedication to music.

Thirdly: The evidence showed some increased brain activity, but did not have a causal link to
increased mental agility, improved neural pathways and networks, nor did it ever cause an
increase of IQ.

Finally: My interpretation of this article leads to me conclude that there is no meaningful effect
of listening to classical music on intelligence. However, if you listen to something that you find
stimulating and enjoyable before doing certain intelligence tasks, you may perform better! But,
I can’t say how long this effect will last, because none of these studies looked at long-term
effects.