Article: Sound of music...does it make you smarter?

[Guest guest]

Celebrated neuroscientist to set the record straight

Professor Della Sala to address misapplication of his research

at University of Edinburgh lectureTom

Tuesday 09 December 2008, The Journal Issue 15

Apparently, listening to Mozart won't make you smarter. Kicking off

the University of Edinburgh Christmas lectures, award-winning

Professor Della Sala looks set give these neurological myths a

thorough going over.

His lecture on 10 December, entitled 'Tall Tales about the Mind and

Brain,' will discuss popular myths about the brain – the kind which

have convinced most of us that we use only ten percent of our brain.

Prof. Della Sala is the first winner of the Tom Dalyell Prize for

Excellence in Engaging the Public with Science, a new award open to

all University of Edinburgh staff. The lecture will coincide with the

presentation of his award for having brought science to the wider

public and achieving international recognition in his field.

Della Sala is Professor of Human Cognitive Neuroscience at the

University, a fellow of the Royal society of Ediburgh and the editor

in chief of Cortex – a journal devoted to the study of the nervous

system and behaviour.

He has also contributed significantly to the ish Government's

initiative, Learning and Teaching Scotland. On the website

(www.ltscotland.org.uk) a series of videos, " Learning about

Learning, " offer insights from leading thinkers on a range of

educational topics.

What Della Sala makes clear in these clips—and he is sure to do the

same in his lecture—is that many of our common notions about the

brain, particularly those which have been exploited for profit, are

either misrepresentations or entirely unfounded. For instance, most

of us know that the brain is composed of two distinct hemispheres,

and, importantly, these two sides do not perform identical functions

(equally well known today but in 1981 this breakthrough won

Sperry a Nobel prize). According to Della Sala, this discovery is the

cause of one of the most widely held and exploited myths about the

brain:

" It's not true that we can stimulate the right hemisphere to become

better at drawing or at doing things or be more compassionate or

amicable if we use the right hemisphere. This is another good example

of how decades of neuroscience have been translated into a simplistic

recipe sold by people who made a fortune with these recipes which

are, to my astonishment, used very widely. "

Della Sala warns that such misappropriation of his science

can " produce disasters in education. "

" Teachers should not use neuroscience as a theoretical basis to

justify what they do.

" In the early '90s three scientists published a paper in Nature ...

claiming that playing Mozart sonata improved a tiny bit, the

performance on a particular task... They only observed an interesting

phenomenon which has been debunked later on. This not withstanding,

less scrupulous scientists created snappy labels: the 'Mozart Effect.'

" And the message passed that if we listen to Mozart music, then we

become more intelligent! "

Deconstruncting such misconceptions has, it seems, become a necessary

task for the neuroscientist and has involved deploying real

scientific insight to address a wider public. Della Sala's lecture

(6pm at the Square Lecture Theatre) will take to task the so-

called neuromyths that abound in modern thinking.

To see Prof Della Sala's videos on the Learning and Teaching Scotland

site visit: http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/learningaboutlearning/

http://www.journal-online.co.uk/article/5180-celebrated-neuroscientist-to-set-th\

e-record-straight

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