The opinion is that the works of classics are preferred by intellectuals, and people who do not have outstanding mental abilities are listened to rap. We decided to check whether various musical directions can affect intelligence.

In various Internet publications, you can find information that music influences on our brain activity. On specialized sites and Portals write that classical music is capable increase The level of development and do man smarter, while Passion ramp speaks O low intelligence. Speaking On the benefits of classics for mental activity, users bring Even quantitative data: “Only ten minutes of the sound of Mozart's piano music increases the intelligence coefficient by 8-10 units.”

Speaking about the influence of intellect music, many often mention the so -called Mozart effect. His Described In 1991, French researcher Alfred Tomatis in his book "Why Mozart ". By this concept, he meant that classical music can have a beneficial effect on a person and with its help you can “train” the brain and even treat some diseases.

In 1993, the effect of Mozart Interested Scientists Francis Rausher, Gordon Show and Katherine Kai from Colombian University. Researchers proposed to three volunteers groups a series of tests for spatio-temporal thinking (one of the Aizenka test blocks). The first group before the test was in silence, the second performed the relaxation exercises, and the third listened to Mozart's sonata. Volunteers who listened to the classics showed the best results in the test. Their concentration of attention and the speed of solving problems were higher than that of other groups. However, the effect of Mozart was short -term. After 15 minutes, subjects from all three groups showed similar results. It is interesting that although scientists did not study and measure the level of IQ volunteers in the original study, however, after publishing an article describing the experiment in Nature magazine, many media, including, for example, New York Times, became write It is about increasing IQ after listening to classical music.

The effect of Mozart was studied by other researchers. In 1997, Professor Kenneth Style from the University of Appalach Spent Meta analysis of the studies existing at that time about the effect of Mozart. He noticed that the results of such tests are extremely ambiguous. In some experiments, listening to classical music briefly increased the success of testing in comparison with silence, while in others it was reduced.

Harvard University Psychologist Christopher Cabris in 1999 also Put it The existence of the effect of Mozart. After conducting a meta -analysis of available publications on the relationship of music and IQ, he came to the conclusion that classical music cannot affect the level of intelligence. The cognitive improvement of the subjects was small and, as the researcher suggested, due to emotional excitement, the music raised the mood, and the respondents coped with tests better.

In 2010, a group of scientists from Vienna University Summarized The data is more than 40 experiments. Scientists compared the classics, music of other genres and silence. They failed to confirm the existence of the effect of Mozart.

In 2012, American researchers Compared The influence of classics and rap on concentration. The subjects were divided into three groups: the first listened to classical music, the second - rap, the third was in silence. Scientists offered them a task for memorizing and playing concentration. The group that listened to rap coped with the tasks of memorizing worse than those who listened to classic works. Scientists suggest that the raPs that sounded against the background distracted the participants from the tests themselves, and the classical music, on the contrary, relaxed.

In 2019, scientists from Oxford University Interrupted 467 high school students about their musical preferences and then asked them to pass the IQ test. Researchers Installedthat RAP lovers "gave out the most depressing indicators by testing." However, they did not conclude that rap musicians reduced intelligence, but only noted the pattern: adolescents with a higher IQ prefer jazz, classics and rock, and with lower-rap and hip-hop.

Thus, at the moment there is no scientific data confirming that classical music increases intelligence, and rap lowers the mental abilities of its fans. At the same time, the works of classics can contribute to a brief improvement in spatial thinking, and rap can violate the concentration of attention.

Image on the cover: Photo by James Stamler on UNSPLash