Read an Excerpt
Twinkle Twinkle, Little Neuron
Music and Your Child's Brain
Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman, Ah! Let me tell you, Mother,
Ce qui cause mon tournment? What's the cause of my torment?
Papa veut que je raisonne, Papa wants me to reason
Comme une grande personne; Like a grown-up.
Moi, je dis que les bonbons Me, I say that candy has
Valent mieux que la raison. Greater value than reason.
Eighteenth-Century French Folk Song
Long before the lyrics to "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star" were written,
children across France sang the words you see above to the same tune.
Seventeen-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart must also have been familiar with
the song, since he used its melody as a starting point for his playful, ever
expanding Variations on Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman (K. 265). Might the
brilliant teenager have chosen this melody to tease his notoriously stern,
ambitious father, Leopold, for his taskmaster approach toward raising a son?
Given Wolfgang's love of jokes and clever wordplay, it certainly seems
likely.
More important, though, Mozart's Variations, now practiced and memorized by
intermediate music students around the world, perfectly evoke the way we
humans best think and grow creatively. After all, as Mozart might tell us if
he were alive today, pleasing, organized melodies such as this one do have
great value, particularly for children. Music speaks in a language that
children instinctively understand. It draws children (as well as adults)
into its orbit, inviting them to match its pitches, incorporate its lyrics,
move to its beat, and explore its emotional and harmonic dimensions in all
their beauty and depth. Meanwhile, its physical vibrations, organized
patterns, engaging rhythms, and subtle variations interact with the mind and
body in manifold ways, naturally altering the brain in a manner that
one-dimensioned rote learning cannot. Children are happy when they are
bouncing, dancing, clapping, and singing with someone they trust and love.
Even as music delights and entertains them, it helps mold their mental,
emotional, social, and physical developmentand gives them the enthusiasm
and the skills they need to begin to teach themselves.
In recent decades, an enormous amount of research has been conducted on the
specific ways in which sound, rhythm, and music can improve our lives. The
results of the research using Mozart's music have been especially stunning
and have given rise to the term the Mozart Effect. I use the phrase to
encompass such phenomena as the ability of Mozart's music to temporarily
heighten spatial awareness and mtelligence; its power to improve listeners'
concentration and speech abilities; its tendency to advance the jump in
reading and language skills among children who receive regular music
instruction; and the startling increase in SAT scores among students who
sing or play an instrument. But the Mozart Effect refers to more than just
raising children's test scores. By learning to recognize and consciously
implement the Mozart Effect in your child's life, you can:
-
Begin to communicate and connect with him even before he is born.
- Stimulate brain growth in the womb and throughout early childhood.
- Positively affect his emotional perceptions and attitudes from
prebirth onward.
- Provide patterns of sound on which he can build his understanding of
the physical world.
- Reduce his level of emotional stress or physical pain, even in
infancy.
- Enhance his motor development, including the grace and ease with
which he learns to crawl, walk, skip, and run.
- Improve his language ability, including vocabulary, expressiveness,
and ease of communication.
- Introduce him to a wider world of emotional expression, creativity,
and aesthetic beauty.
- Enhance his social abilities.
- Improve his reading, writing, mathematical, and other academic
skills, as well as his ability to remember and to memorize.
- Introduce him to the joys of community.
- Help him create a strong sense of his own identity.
It is amazing to think that music and rhythmic verbal sounds, which have
been available to us throughout our lives, can have such a powerful effect
on the mind and body. Yet the evidence is indisputable. There's far more to
good music than meets the ear. Wisely used, it can create a healthy and
stimulating sound world for your family and profoundly enhance your child's
growth.
How I Wonder What You Are
From the beginning of time, humankind has sensed the power of vibration,
rhythm, and sound. Many cultures' creation myths describe a primordial sound
or vibration that created matter from nothingness. The ancient Chinese and
Egyptians considered music a fundamental element -- one that reflected the
principles governing the universe. It was believed that music had the power
to uplift or degrade the psyche, to change the fate of entire civilizations.
As a result, humans have made music throughout history to celebrate the
passing of the seasons and mark passages in the lives of each member of the
community, and have used rhythm to instill a sense of oneness among members
of tribes and other groups.
Now, as one millennium ends and a new one begins, science is confirming the
truth behind this age-old intuition. A recent article in Science News tells
us that sound in the early universe, in the form of vibrational waves, may
have helped orchestrate the striking pattern of galaxy clusters and huge
voids we see in the sky today. We know that the moon itself vibrates,
essentially "ringing" like a bell in a process known as spherical harmonics,
probably in response to a long-ago meteor strike. In a similar fashion,
tsunamis are created by the vibrational effects of earthquakes, which cause
very small (yet detectable) wave that can grow enormously high. Music is
simply a special case of this kind of vibrationa wave of energy that
transfers some its power to us.
<%=fontsmall%>From The Mozart Effect for Children, Chapter 1, © 2000 by Don Campbell<%=xfontsmall%>