Music to math: thinking in pictures - Palette

ChildArt, Jan-March, 2004 by Gordon L. Shaw

Do you get bleary-eyed trying to figure out an equation, a word problem, or related symbols in math class?

Well you're not alone--many kids find math challenging. It can be boring and tough and impossible to comprehend.

Well, now you can enjoy learning both music and math. At the M.I.N.D. Institute in Costa Mesa, California, scientists are coming up with ways to make math easier to learn, by combining computer skills with music.

In fact, M.I.N.D. stands for "Music Intelligence Neural Development," and the research done by the scientists at this institute is helping us see how music can be used to understand how our brain works. The institute has applied its fifteen years of groundbreaking research on the connection between music and math to create its Math & Music (M M) program, for children in second through fourth grades.

The M M program is designed to enhance our natural ability to think in pictures, and emphasizes challenging math problems, particularly fraction models; graphing; p]ace value; pre-algebra; ratio and proportion; shape visualization, patterns, ordering and congruency; and symmetry operations, rotations and unfolding.

In the M M program, M.I.N.D. scientists try to make it easier to learn difficult math concepts by combining piano keyboard training with a specially designed computer program called S.T.A.R. (Spatial-Temporal Animation Reasoning). This program develops our innate ability to use our brain to think in pictures--imagine something at a certain time and place and think ahead. This skill is called "spatial-temporal" ability, and we use it in many ways, such as when we learn music, or play a logic game like chess.

Students in the M M program are given music training on the piano keyboard and they are exposed to music like Mozart's. Why Mozart? Well, Mozart was a musical genius! He began composing at the age of four and was able to compose an entire piece in his head at one time, without changing a single note later. Amazing! Because his music came so purely from his brain, it can be seen as a musical version of the language of the mind.

The M M Program is now used by about 10,000 second through fourth graders in more than 40 U.S. schools. And current statistics have shown significant leaps when children in the program are given this keyboard training in combination with computer-based learning to increase their math knowledge. But as its 'thinking in pictures' approach goes beyond all cultural and language barriers, this program could be used by any student, anywhere, to increase math knowledge by using something we love--music--to reinforce and improve the ability to think in pictures. Furthermore, you're learning and having fun, just as you see here!

History

In 1991 Dr. Gordon Shaw, co-founder of the M.I.N.D. Institute, and Dr. Xiaodan Leng developed a mathematical model of the brain cortex in which they proposed that musical activity and other higher brain activities relating to thinking in pictures "share inherent neural firing patterns organized in a highly structured spatial-temporal code." In English, this means that whether we're playing music, or working on a difficult math problem, what happens to our brain cells and the way they react is very similar. Dr. Shaw and Dr. Leng suggest that this spatial-temporal reasoning--thinking in pictures--is built into the brain cortex and can be enhanced by music.

In 1993, Dr. Shaw and Dr. Frances Rauscher used a Mozart composition to illustrate this point. Coined the "Mozart effect" by the media, their study showed that college students' spatial-temporal reasoning was enhanced after listening to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448, an intellectual piece selected for its form, patterns, and symmetry.

Dr. Gordon L. Shaw is Institute Scientist and Chairman Emeritus of the M.I.N.D. Institute, and Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of California, at Irvine. For more information, visit www.MindInstitute.net and see the recent second edition of his book "Keeping Mozart in Mind" from Elsevier/Academic Press.

"The arts and the sciences offer many exciting journeys, for they are complimentary ways of investigating our world. With science we explore the physical and biological universes, and use our minds to learn about mysteries that our eyes cannot see. In the arts we observe our world, think imaginatively, and learn to organize the individual ways in which we think and feel. Both art and science are ways of representing important information, and have been used for this purpose since the dawn of history."

Judith Burton, Ph.D. Professor and Chair of the Department of the Arts and Humanities, and Director of the Program in Art and Art Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.