The Mozart Effect
Duality in Human Cognitive Processing
By
Thomas Mastroianni
The Mozart Effect was first suggested in 1991 by Alfred A. Tomatis, MD, a French otolaryngology researcher, in his book, Pourquoi Mozart?[1] His research dealt with human hearing as a cognitive process that goes beyond the mere sensory phenomenon and suggested that listening to Mozart could have effects on cognitive brain regions in addition to the more obvious sensory brain networks. He proposed that listening to Mozart promoted physical healing and brain development.
In 1993 two researchers at the University of California at Irvine, Frances Raucher and Gordon Shaw, found that listening to Mozart had abeneficial effect onabstract spatial reasoning, as measured by the administration of intelligence tests following prolonged listening to Mozart.[2] In subsequent years, however, other researchers could not replicate the findings, nor identify the neurological facilitation that was claimed by the early research.
Don Campbell’s 1997 book, The Mozart Effect,[3] popularized and expounded the concept of the potential benefits of music listening as a means of cognitive development. Campbell traveled extensively doing workshops for music educators inclined to welcome the good news. His presentations were popular because he suggested questions that many arts educators were eager to contemplate.
Indeed, there are many questions worth asking. Do the arts contribute to intellectual and spiritual growth by exercising the human cognitive process in ways unrecognized by those who emphasize science and the scientific method? Are scientific truth and deductive reasoning sufficient educational goals? Does human physiology suggest that cognition is a dual process,in which each brain hemisphere processes awareness in a different manner?
The polemics suggest that additional research is needed to explore the biological issues. Rather than confronting the scientific aspects of this problem, however, this paper will focus on a more fundamental issue suggested by the potential relationship between aesthetic experience and logical cognition. Is it possible that music (or the arts in general) can have an effect on rational cognition? This seems to be the philosophical question underlying the quest to identify the Mozart effect. Taken a step further, it may be possible to ask whether understanding cognition as a dual human process may address the relationship between aesthetic experience and truth.
The problem
There is considerable misunderstanding of the role that the arts and beauty play in our culture. The arts are often considered as entertainment, and beauty is primarily defined in sensory terms only. The current appeal of validating a Mozart effect is that such a validation would challenge the unfortunatemisunderstandings. If it were true that the arts and beautypredispose the human person to higher goals and more sublime hopes and in addition stimulate effective cognitive skills, could they be more widely recognized as lofty human pursuits rather than as merely entertainment and sensory gratification?
Unfortunately the problem is deeper. Julian Bell’s article Why Art? in The New York Times Review of Books (October 8, 2009) presents two authors, Ben-Ami Scharfstein and Denis Dalton, who examine that question (“Why art?”).[4] Their search for the answer is based on the theories and studies of evolutionists, archeologists and paleontologists, many of whom would lead us to consider art as flourishing in a spandrel, a space unintentionally created by the evolutionary architectural arch. In this view, the arts are not integral to the structure of the arch and are unessential to the survival of the species. To explain art and beauty solely in terms of the mechanics of evolution or by the observation of the physical aspects of human history is like studying the motor of a vehicle without considering the trip the vehicle is designed to make. “Why a vehicle” if there is no trip? Could it be argued that beauty, in human life and in art, is a temporal vehicle whose ultimate destination is the beatific vision?
Some of the blame for the misunderstanding of the role of the arts in contemporary society can be attributed to some artists themselves and to the system of arts marketing that is woefully morassed in materialism and the star system. Self seeking and success oriented motivation in the arts professions have transformed the role of the artist from servant to star. The artist is by nature a servant (this was so in the days of Haydn and Mozart). Self perfection for profit is sterile. An awareness of and dedication to beauty must move the artist to serve the human community. The artist creates beauty to elevate human experience. Thus art serves humanity and the artist is servant.
The star system developed in the late 19th and 20th Centuries when the mode of musical and artistic presentation changed from intimate or symbolic settings (such as the home, the salon, the Church and the court) to glitzy showcases where thousands of listeners and viewers stand or sit in awe of works many of them are ill prepared to understand. Frank Wilson[5] (a California Neurobiologist) explains the “black box / white box” music performance paradigm where the star artist performs on a platform in a box bathed in painfully brilliant light as the audience sits unobtrusively in a separate box in crowded seatingand dim light. The 18th Century offered environments more well-suited to the experience of the arts as beautyrather than as show. Beauty is not just sensual pleasure for mass consumption. Beauty, like knowledge, is for personal consumption. Beauty is for everyone, but for one person at a time. It is potentially everywhere. George Santayana explains “…that the whole world is made to be food for the soul… beauty is not only its own, but all things’ excuse for being …(it) is the poetical reverberation of the fact…that our mind is an organism tending to unity”.[6] (Notice in this quote that the mind is implicated in beauty’s “excuse for being”.)
Beauty
The aesthetic experience which music and the other arts provide is the experience of beauty. How does beauty elevate the human?
Etienne Gilson approaches this question by first defining aesthetic existence. His treatment of aesthetic existence leads one to understand that beauty is a cognitive process. “Aesthetic existence…belongs to paintings inasmuch as they are actually being perceived…like music or poetry, paintings enjoy only a discontinuous mode of existence which lasts as long as the aesthetic experience.”[7] This statement implies that beauty is in the mind of the beholder, or at least depends on a beholder for actualization. Gilson seems, however, to ignore the common phenomenon that the aesthetic experience of a work can exist in the mind of a viewer or a hearer in the absence of the work. The enjoyment of a Mozart Symphony can occur while there is no present performance of it. One can enjoy the smile of the Mona Lisa without standing in the Louvre. The aesthetic existence is not the exclusive property of the art work per se, but has rather a uniquely human existence. The memory of a Mozart Symphony, which allows one to recall and to re-experience it, has a physical existence in the individual who remembers it. The neural networks in the human brain once activated in memory have a physical existence apart from the sound waves, the printed page or the painted canvass. To hear a Mozart score for the 2nd or the 10th time is quite a different experience from the original hearing. Knowing and remembering what happens at the end of the work makes hearing the beginning again an experience that is absolutely impossible on first hearing. We hear not only with our ears but with our memory. This is the central point of Alfred Tomatis’ research on the Mozart effect.[8] The healing effects Tomatis describes result from repeated exposure to Mozart in which learning and memory take place and not from a single magical exposure. Obviously, learning and memory are critical. The experience of beauty to some degree physically changes the neurological organization of the brain.
This may be true of language also. Words heard for the fist time may conveyno meaning. Words have meaning only insofar as the brain of the human can register, recall and relate them to learned contexts.
Beauty as Sensation, Emotion and Cognition
It may be tempting to consider beauty and aesthetic experience as sensation or emotion. Sensory input is experienced by all living species. This input is a primitive form of knowledge and experience,but is distinct from reason or cognition.
The title of George Santayana’s book, The Sense of Beauty[9] (subtitled:Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory) might lead one to overrate sensation as contributing to an understanding of the essence of beauty. Indeed in his treatment of the “Materials of Beauty” the reader is led perilously close to British empiricism (“…visible objects are nothing but the possibilities of sensation. The real world is merely the shadow of that assurance of eventual experience”),[10] and later the Freudian view of reality and the senses emerges (“…for man all nature is a secondary object of sexual passion, and to this fact the beauty of nature is largely due”).[11] He defines beauty as “…pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing...it is an emotion, an affection of our volitional and appreciative nature”.[12]
Elsewhere in this important book, Santayana develops his definition of beauty further to focus on cognition and judgment. In the chapter on The Nature of Beauty, he indicates that “the philosophy of beauty is a theory of values”.[13] “Perception is not sensation.”[14] “Observation will not do, appreciation is required.”[15] Judgment and cognition are thus intrinsic to the nature of beauty. These remarks and conclusions are expressly directed at the nature of beauty and not merely at the process of therecognition of beauty. In fact, Santayana goes so far in his treatment of beauty of form as to claim: “Nothing is objectively impressive; things are impressive only when they succeed in touching the sensibility of the observer, by finding avenues to his brain and heart”.[16] It appears that in his treatment of the aesthetic experience, Santayana implicates the whole human: senses, emotions, cognition, judgment and will.
Beauty and Knowledge
Jacques Maritan refers to “the indestructible relationship of… aesthetic beauty to the kingdom of intelligence”.[17]
Can Beauty and Knowledge be considered as distinct but parallel cognitive functions which rely on human memory? Can there be knowledge without the knower or without memory? Theoccasional failure to recall information at a given point in time, does not invalidate the dependence of earthly knowledge on human memory. Text on a page does not become knowledge (that is, it is not known) until a human with memory, language skill and previous experience with the words and symbols inscribed will actualize the knowledge in the human brain. If this is true, then knowledge may besomething other than a Platonist ideal which is shared by various knowers, but rather the actualization and retention of human experience in individuals. It is human cargo. Aesthetic and epistemological existences depend upon and are carried by human existence – at least on earth. (Ego sum, ergo sapiencia est. With apologies to Descartes may this betruthfully claimed?)
Much (and perhaps most) of what we know derives from predication and logic. We piece together gradually our view of the world around us. The human brain is well equipped to undertake the linear learning task in which our network of knowledge is constantly enlarged by experience and by reflection. Neural networks are constructed in gradually expanding cellular connectivity. The physiology of memory is a study still in the pioneering stages and it is tempting to exaggerate the importance of the neurobiological aspects of the issue, but the view taken here is that we experience knowledge and beauty with every aspect of our being – body and soul. The human soul is more complex than that which can be ascertained from the biology of the cognitive process which supports it.
According to Keats, Beauty is truth and truth is beauty.[18] What truth does beauty reveal? Beauty deals with those truths which are self evident. Except in poetry, no words can adequately describe or define the beauty of a sunset. What does poetry do that arguments cannot reveal? A linguistic or logical critique of Keats’ Odeon a Grecian Urn reveals a text full of paradox and even contradiction which could hardly stand the scrutiny of syllogistic analysis. It is poor argument. Yet who can read this poem and not get the point? Metaphor, symbolism and intuition can reveal truth.
Music does not depend on analysis to reveal its message. Music is a universal language capable of informing, educating and uplifting anyone – regardless of language or musical
training. Music says what words cannot say. It penetrates the inner self. Even when it purports to convey a story, it addresses the underlying spirit and symbolism of the story and provides a vehicle which enables us to enter into this spirit.
Painting and sculpture go beyond portrayal of the material world. If that were not so, why would anyone look at a canvas instead of the world it represents? When we view art we look beyond the image at something more fundamental and spiritual. The symbolist poets and painters (for example, Verlaine, Baudelaire or Redon) held that images and language in art transcend depiction and the explanation of material reality in order to achieve a deeper level of inner experience. We experience self understanding. We discover the past and its lessons. We see the future and raise our spirit. We dream.
Cognitive Duality
Through the centuries manyepistemological studies have focused on understanding and validating human reason. The search for truth is based on laws of reason that have functioned for millennia. Syllogistic principles are basic to any reasoned argument in alinear and incremental process. What we know of the human cognitive biological process is consonant with traditional epistemological precept. Synaptic connectivity expands as learning progresses. Brain activity promotes this process predictably through demonstrable activation of cognitive structures mainly in the left brain. The complexity of the biological process remains to be fully explained or understood and too strong an emphasis on hemispheric specialization in the brain is not generally regarded as valid.
The human mind, however, is capable of knowing in more than one way. Another avenue to cognition is non-incremental and non-linear. Human knowing which comes in holistic flashes can be described as insight, inspiration, intuition or imagination. These are but a few of the words we use to describe pre-syllogistic or non-linear cognition. We know that certain things are true before proof materializes. Most of what we actuallyknow is taken on faith. (We sometimes even believe what we read in the newspaper.) More to the point, a hypothesis usually precedes research. A hypothesis may arise in a flash of intuition and then generate a disciplined logical process. The evidence that follows is deemed to be knowledge, but how did the researcher know to look for it? We often describe our insights as elegant and beautiful. Indeed, logic and scientific reasoning often follow insight and true cognition is a balanced dual process. Faith and reason are deemed to be compatible. Beauty and logic are indispensable partners.
The experience of beauty is a form of insight. Insight is knowing which is not directly dependent on syllogistic activity. The direct and immediate recognition of beauty, for example, does not require an argument or any linear accumulation of facts. The movement of insight is often mistaken for “sensation or emotion”. It is true that sensation and emotion often accompany insight, but emotion is biologically manifest by neurotransmitters located structurally marginal to the cognitive brain and is experienced by a wider field of beings than the human species. Direct insight is heavily dependent on the cognitive areas of the right brain. Although left and right brain descriptions oversimplify the process, nonetheless, reference to them is helpful in understanding the dichotomy of human knowledge. The integration of these two ways of knowing adds depth and perspective to our understanding just as having two eyes enhances our vision.
While the two cognitive functions are distinct, there are many ways in which the partnership is promoted. Reason implies congruity, integrity and meaning. Beauty,likewise, must be founded oncongruity, integrity and appropriateness. Aquinas makes a similar point when he describes beauty as consisting of integrity, harmony and clarity.[19] That which is self contradictory, incongruous, meaningless, unclear or inappropriate cannot be beautiful, nor can logic be served by such characteristics.
Aquinas seems to be in accord with Aristotle who proposes that art is “…a reasoned state” (of the capacity to make).[20] Creativitymay be a good descriptor for this reasoned state. According to Gilson, ”Aristotle teaches that there is in matter a craving for … form … Form is that on account of which a certain thing is the very thing that it is”.[21] Understanding form is a cognitive process. “Form is the ratio or “reason” of a thing…which makes it intelligible (in) totality, wholeness, completion, perfection.”[22] Conceding that form is in Nature, Gilson adds that for Aristotle, “…natural causality and artistic causality are far from being unrelated”.[23]