What’s the bigger picture that you see emerging from science’s ongoing efforts to study the brain effects of music and arts?
ESS: Music and visual arts are universal across human cultures, and also unique to humans. These simple facts raise wonderful questions for brain science. Human brains function similarly to the brains of other animals; yet, our species takes these shared biological capacities in dramatically new directions. We have a lot to learn about ourselves from research that probes what goes on in our brains when we experience or create music or visual arts—and what goes on in the brains of our children when we share arts experiences with them. I think these are much more important questions than the question of whether a child will gain a few IQ or SAT points by taking music classes. By focusing on the latter question, we miss the richness of human experience and essential importance of the arts in human learning.
As a scientist, do you think it matters that (as surveys suggest) more than 80 percent of people think that music makes you smarter when the scientific evidence is not there to back it up?
ESS: I think questions such as whether music should be taught in schools—and more broadly, whether human societies would be poorer if music were neglected—are important questions. We don’t know the answers yet. I wouldn’t say that people who believe that music makes you smarter are wrong or right. We just simply don’t know enough about the human mind at this point to be able to specify the cognitive impacts of music, or of any of the other activities that people universally engage in. Among all our uniquely human capacities, is there a subset of capacities that are especially important, amid a larger sea of less important ones? My hunch is that all our culturally universal, species-unique capacities for creating knowledge are important, and all should be imparted to our children. But I don’t think science yet bears on this belief.
So I stand by the modest conclusions of our PLoS ONE paper. Our findings don’t debunk any beliefs and they shouldn’t close off research in any area. Quite the contrary: we need more research on arts, cognition and the brain. The arts are a central product of the human mind and a central aspect of human experience. By studying how our minds create them, we'll gain insight into ourselves.
- Full interview with Elizabeth S. Spelke, Ph.D. here
ESS: Music and visual arts are universal across human cultures, and also unique to humans. These simple facts raise wonderful questions for brain science. Human brains function similarly to the brains of other animals; yet, our species takes these shared biological capacities in dramatically new directions. We have a lot to learn about ourselves from research that probes what goes on in our brains when we experience or create music or visual arts—and what goes on in the brains of our children when we share arts experiences with them. I think these are much more important questions than the question of whether a child will gain a few IQ or SAT points by taking music classes. By focusing on the latter question, we miss the richness of human experience and essential importance of the arts in human learning.
As a scientist, do you think it matters that (as surveys suggest) more than 80 percent of people think that music makes you smarter when the scientific evidence is not there to back it up?
ESS: I think questions such as whether music should be taught in schools—and more broadly, whether human societies would be poorer if music were neglected—are important questions. We don’t know the answers yet. I wouldn’t say that people who believe that music makes you smarter are wrong or right. We just simply don’t know enough about the human mind at this point to be able to specify the cognitive impacts of music, or of any of the other activities that people universally engage in. Among all our uniquely human capacities, is there a subset of capacities that are especially important, amid a larger sea of less important ones? My hunch is that all our culturally universal, species-unique capacities for creating knowledge are important, and all should be imparted to our children. But I don’t think science yet bears on this belief.
So I stand by the modest conclusions of our PLoS ONE paper. Our findings don’t debunk any beliefs and they shouldn’t close off research in any area. Quite the contrary: we need more research on arts, cognition and the brain. The arts are a central product of the human mind and a central aspect of human experience. By studying how our minds create them, we'll gain insight into ourselves.
- Full interview with Elizabeth S. Spelke, Ph.D. here
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