Mozart effect (part 2)

To test their assumptions Rauscher put a special experiment on rats, which is obviously not an emotional reaction to the music. A group of 30 rats was placed in a room where Mozart’s Sonata in C major sounded for more than two months for 12 hours in a row.

It turned out that after that the rats ran the maze on average 27 percent faster and with 37 percent fewer errors than the other 80 rats that developed among random noise or in silence. According to Rausher, this experiment confirms the neurological rather than emotional nature of the Mozart effect. Continue reading →