Some research has concluded that listening to compositions by the Austrian musician Wolfgang Amadus Mozart – like other pieces of classical music – would accelerate the early development of certain cognitive qualities . It is a hypothesis on which there is no total agreement, since not a few experts argue that there is nothing proven in this regard : as in many other facets of children’s intellectual growth, it is difficult to do rigorous experiments. In any case, a study carried out by neurologists at the University of Maryland (USA) offers a clue as to the possible physiological bases of the alleged Mozart effect. The authors of the work collected data on a type of cell present in the primary processing area of the brain during early development. Until now it was thought that the so-called neurons in the subplate were part of a structural scaffold with no function in the transmission of sensory information, but the experiment found that they do conduct signals. This finding would support earlier research documenting fetuses’ brain activity , hitherto unlocated, in response to sound. These nerve cells are among the first to make up the cerebral cortex, a region that controls perception, abstract reasoning, language, and memory .
The theory began to be forged in 1991, when the French otolaryngologist and researcher Alfred A. Tomatis published the book Pourquoi Mozar t, based on his Tomatis Method . It is a therapeutic procedure that uses music during therapy sessions with patients , based on the idea that Mozart’s work can even cure cases of depression. The Tomatis method aims to stimulate the ear and nervous system to integrate various aspects of human development and behavior . In 1993, the French psychologist Rauscher, from the University of California, described in the article Music and Spatial Task Performance , published in the journal Nature , the positive effects in tests of space-time reasoning that were observed in 36 students who listened during 10 minutes the sonata for two pianos in D major KV 448 / 375a (included in the Köchel catalog). The study was done with three groups of high school students. While some of them listened to the aforementioned work of Mozart, a second group listened to relaxation instructions designed to lower blood pressure and the third remained silent. The researchers found that students who had listened to Mozart scored higher than students in the other groups.
However, Francesca Rauscher herself has made it clear later that there is no scientific evidence that listening to some type of music increases intelligence . Further investigation reveals that Mozart’s sonatas are pleasant to the ear, but that it cannot be inferred from this that they enhance children’s intelligence .
