In today’s cutthroat world, we want our children to have it all. We want them to be enrolled in the most renowned schools, be well-read, to be equipped with all that’s necessary and beyond, to stand tall in front of society and to have outstanding extra-curricular activities to flash on their college applications.

Parents don’t only obsess over the future of their unborn children, but they go the extra mile to prepare their children for what’s yet to come. These parents are called ‘Helicopter Parents’, hovering over their children constantly. This term appeared in literature as early as 1969 and the American Colleges of Administrators started using the term in the 2000s.

One of the more interesting patterns that have come to light amidst these parents is the hype over involving children in classical music training. Researchers have established that musical training or music in itself does create new pathways in the brain, although it cannot be denied that music does indeed have a powerful impact on our emotional capacities.

A parent knows that a sweet sounding calming lullaby can drown a wailing child into deep pits of slumber, that a merry sounding jingle can put a priceless smile on the child’s face and that a rhythmic beat can spin the child into a dancing spiral! But this is not it, music can also impact the way we think. Research also shows that listening to music; especially classical music can improve our spatial reasoning capabilities. This, in fact, is only temporarily, though. This phenomenon is called the ‘Mozart Effect’.

The Mozart Effect, which was first reported by researchers at the University of California at Irvine in 1993, found that college students who listened to a Mozart Sonata before attempting a test measuring spatial reasoning fared better than those who listened to some other genre of music or no music at all. Even though the effect lasted for only fifteen minutes, it was ample enough for the media to glorify the so called Mozart Effect. But is this true? Well, not exactly. The only credible extraction out of this unwitting hype is the fact that music seems to act more as a primer to our brain for certain kinds of reasoning and thinking processes. Much research has been conducted and has proven that listening to classical music can help individuals perform tasks such as putting a jigsaw puzzle together or perform other spatial tasks in a relatively quick fashion.

This is because the pathways created in our brain by classical music are similar to those used for spatial reasoning, and when we listen to classical music our spatial reasoning pathways are activated. It is this priming precisely which can help an individual work a puzzle quicker. The reason classical music in particular impacts spatial reasoning is because of its complex musical structure, consequently priming the brain more than other, more simplistic genres of music. However, it is important to realise that these effects only last for a few minutes and by no means have any long term or permanent benefits to the brain.

This research is precisely what gave rise to the notion that infants who listened to classical music would be smarter than those who didn’t. When it comes to infants and the likes of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, the impact of classical music is no different than what it is for adults. The only extrapolation that can be established is that infants as young as three months old can pick out structures of classical music compositions and even recognise the selections that they have heard before. However, there are studies which show classical music training may have a long lasting impact on infant development as compared to merely listening to classical music.

Research conducted at the Brigham Young University and University of Texas at Austin suggests that infants can categorise auditory stimuli. This research found that infants as young as seven months of age could distinguish between timbre and melody as well as recognise a certain melody when played in isolation on a single instrument. Since an infant’s brain is not fully developed at the time of birth, it is essential to provide the child with adequate sensory input which can allow the brain cells to grow and connect. Music has proven to be an effective nutrient for a child’s brain development in this regard, but on a tertiary level.

Classical music does create new pathways in the brain similar to those used by spatial and temporal reasoning, and it can be concluded from the research conducted that classical music does have a slight impact on a child’s development in an indirect manner. Since spatial and temporal reasoning deals with math, logic and language, classical music training during a child’s early developmental years may provide the child with enough auditory stimulation to augment these facets of development as the infant gradually obtains cognitive skills. However, it must be noted that classical music does not supplement development of infants, it merely walks with it.

This article was originally published in the March 2014 issue of Spider Magazine.