Hear neuroscientist Richard Haier speak about plasticity and debunk the Mozart effect, the claim that IQ can be increased by listening to a Mozart sonata
Neuroscientist Richard Haier discusses plasticity and debunks the Mozart effect, the notion that human intelligence can be improved by listening to classical music, especially works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
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Transcript
Because of this concept of plasticity, there have been a lot of claims that you can change the brain and make people smarter. You can actually increase intelligence. And that experience changes the brain. The brain is plastic. So why not make people smarter?
And one of the first examples of this was 1993 when a group published a paper claiming an increase in IQ after listening to a particular piece of music.
You recognize this Mozart sonata? Listen to this for a few seconds. Do you feel smarter? Anybody else feel smarter?
So this really took the scientific world and the public by storm, that you can become smarter, higher IQ, just by listening to Mozart. At the time, in 1993, the governor of Georgia heard about this and got their state legislature to appropriate money to buy Mozart CDs to give to every mother of a newborn baby in the state of Georgia.
So here we are some years later. IQ has not changed. This is now referred to as the "Schmozart" effect because, in fact, it really couldn't be replicated. But it took years.
Every high school science fair I went to when my kids were growing up had a Mozart experiment. And I'm sure these were all over the country. But in truth-- it didn't work. But it was an example of brain plasticity.
And one of the first examples of this was 1993 when a group published a paper claiming an increase in IQ after listening to a particular piece of music.
You recognize this Mozart sonata? Listen to this for a few seconds. Do you feel smarter? Anybody else feel smarter?
So this really took the scientific world and the public by storm, that you can become smarter, higher IQ, just by listening to Mozart. At the time, in 1993, the governor of Georgia heard about this and got their state legislature to appropriate money to buy Mozart CDs to give to every mother of a newborn baby in the state of Georgia.
So here we are some years later. IQ has not changed. This is now referred to as the "Schmozart" effect because, in fact, it really couldn't be replicated. But it took years.
Every high school science fair I went to when my kids were growing up had a Mozart experiment. And I'm sure these were all over the country. But in truth-- it didn't work. But it was an example of brain plasticity.
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