draft of paper (so far)

Researchers have long wondered about whether or not music increases brain activity, having been unable to determine if a certain type of music increases spatial-temporal abilities. My research offers an answer: there is not a certain type of music that makes someone smarter. The music listened to depends on the person. One type of music may affect some by distracting them, while for others it may soothe them. There is not one type of music that increases spatial-temporal abilities, but music certainly does. But when and where can music help?
Music has played an important part in history. Many people think that no important person used music to help them with ideas and problems. I even thought that music didn’t have a significant role in history.
Well, those people are wrong, as am I. Take for example, Thomas Jefferson. He played the violin to help with the construction and editing of the Declaration of Independence. If he couldn't figure out how to word what he had in mind, he would play the violin to clear his thoughts and organize his words.
But that is not all! Even Einstein, the smartest mathematician in the world played the violin to help him solve math problems and equations. If he couldn't figure out the problem, then he would play his violin to relax and organize his thoughts. Einstein himself even said he was so smart because he played the violin. As a friend of Einstein said, "The way Einstein figured out his problems and equations was by improvising on the violin."
So far, violin seems to be the prominent instrument for clearing the mind. But is that the only instrument, and is classical the only type of music? Well, before I can go into what certain type[s] of music and instruments help the most, we need to first uncover what different types of music “require”, if it need be put that way.
First off, rock music. What do we think about rock music? Some say that it is a waste of time, and that it does not have any melody to it at all. Well, rock music originated in the 1950’s by blacks. It’s true, though most people believe that white people created rock music. Blacks created rock, but whites stole the ideas and became rich off of it. John Lennon, of the famous British group, The Beatles, says that “It hurt my heart that they were not as big as they were in the 1950s," he said. "[Chuck] Berry is the greatest influence on earth. So is Bo Diddley, and so is Little Richard. There is not one Mute group on earth that hasn't got their music in them. And that's all I ever listened to. The only White person I ever listened to was [Elvis] Presley on his early music, and he was doing Black music."
So now we know about rock music’s origin. But what about classical? From where does classical music originate? Classical music originated between mid-16th and early 19th centuries. The music is mostly the focus of “classical traditions, formal styles and is technically very complex” (1).Classical music wasn’t even a term per se, until the late 19th century in order to distinguish the period of Bach to the period of Beethoven.
But of all those different types of music, which one makes the most impact? Which one makes you the smartest? Studies show that each music affects people in different ways. A study conducted by the University of California-Irvine about Mozart's music showed that the spatial-temporal abilities of the subjects increased significantly. The students' test scores increased significantly after listening to Mozart immediately before taking the test. The test also showed that the increased spatial-temproal abilities decreased after about an hour. But is Mozart the only music to do this? Well, a study done at ISU on the effects of whether rock'n'roll affects the brain's ability to solve math equations and their understanding of speaking and reading material. The study concluded that rock "interfered with math and verbal, but not reading"(Dahlager 1). So rock is good for reading, but what about classical and jazz? For what are those good? Well, resesrachers say that classical music relaxes people, and for me, I know that it does. Instrumental soundracks are the best for those ever stressful tests. But jazz? One researcher supports the idea that jazz does increase brain activity, but for a short time. Jazz is helpful if you need to write a creative paper. It helps you to bring ideas that you would not normally think about.

Lookie here! An Outline!

Thesis
How many of your school’s music concerts have you attended? One? Two? None at all? Well, according to recent studies, they show that music increases spatial-temporal abilities. That is, to be put in lamens terms, music makes you smarter.

Outline for main paper

• Music in History
  1. Jefferson played violin to help with D of I
  2. Einstein played violin to help with math problems and equations
  
• Types of music
  1. Rock
  2. Jazz
  3. Classical
  
• Which type of music increases brain activity the most?
  1. Studies with Mozart/classical
  2. Studies with Rock
  3. Studies with classical and jazz
  
• What types of music are best for stressful times?
  1. Studying
  2. Interviews
  3. Writing
  
• Conclusion
  1. Main points restated in different words
  2. Restate main idea
  3. Pose rhetorical question for last hit
  A. What if there was no music? Would no one have heard of Mozart or N*SYNC?

feedback

Most of the responses I have received have said that I had an overall excellent bibliography. One peer said that it could very well be used as my final copy. I will try to add more information to the ones that have very little summaries. I will also fix the spelling errors. There really wasn't anything anyone found wrong, but I still will analyze it and fix it accordingly.

my bibliography (for now)

• Demorest,Steven M.; Steven J. Morrison. Music Educators Journal, Vol. 87, No. 2, Special Focus: Music and the Brain. (Sep. 2000), pp. 33-39+58.
  

This article explores some of the research studies that have proposed connections between musical involvement and general inteligence. Morrison and Demorest explored two series of studies in detail. The first series documents a short-term increase in performance on a spatial reasoning task after listening to Mozart, often referrred as "the Mozart Effect". The second series concluded that piano instruction caused preschoolers to improve on a single test or spatial reasoning ability. The research analyzed how long and when the most improvement would occur.

In my paper I will use these studies as my primary source to enforce my point that music does make you smarter, but it depends on how early you have music instruction. For my secondary source I will use questions I have asked students who are musicians and non musicians.

• Janata, P., & Tramo, M. J. (2006, May 9). Music and the Brain. (I. Flatow, Interviewer)

This dicsussion generalizes my topic by just the way music affects the brain. In the discussion, it is asked why certain songs bring back memories. It is a connection in the brain that is activated when it is stimulated. This makes the brain reconnect with memories. That is why therapeutic hypnotists use music to bring back memories if someone suffers from amnesia.

• Dahlager, Jon. Iowa State Daily News. Undefined section. Can Music Make You Smarter? (Sept. 1999), p.1.
  

This article mainly states that there is not one type of music that makes people smart. Dahlager states that music doesn't make people smart, but smart people listen to music. John Prater states that different music affects different minds. Dahlager then goes on into the notion that music does have an effect on the brain, referencing a 1993 experiment conducted at the Univeristy of California-Irvine. It found that the student's spatial-temporal abilities increased after listening to Mozart. I will use this article as research proving the fact that music does make you smarter, but not necessarily that only Mozart music makes you smarter.

• Lee, Carina. Music Really Does Help Your Brain. (june 2006), http://clearlyexplained.com/news/nature/2006/jun/1N2806_06.html
  

This article (as the website states) clearly explains how music helps your brain. I will be using this article as research for the basic idea of why music helps brain activity

rough draft bibliography introduction #1

My original idea for this paper was to prove to parents and everyone that music needed to stay in schools, but I couldn't find musch information on that, so I had to alter my topic, so the first main topic for my paper started out as "does music help with academics?" but then evolved to "does music increase brain activity?". I found that this made a more general viewpoint, and I found many more sources with the evolved question. I also found that this covered the major points I wanted to discuss in my paper.
My audience started out as students of sociology/psychology/education/music and sociologists/psychologists/teachers/musicians and parents, but I found that that was too many audience members, and that most of these audience members were not the ones that I really needed to focus on. So I chose to focus on the students. They are more likely to be more open to the idea of using music in the classroom. I also wanted to show how the brain develops and how it differs between musicians and non musicians.
Even as I went through my articles, I found that all of them were saying the same thing. Music does increase the brain size. To quote Carina Lee's article, Music really does help your brain, "Grey matter is the tissue component of the brain where a relatively high proportion of neural activity occurs and many nerve cell nuclei can be found in this region." [btw, the function of grey matter is "to route sensory or motor stimulus to interneurons of the CNS in order to create a response to the stimulus through chemical synapse activity...(Narr, 2006).] That shows that the increase of grey matter does make you smarter, which is caused in part by the music. I am definitely not saying it is the only thing, but it is one of them.

my sources

• http://hs.riverdale.k12.or.us/~dthomso/exhib_03/jasonc/The_Affect_of_Music_on_the_Human_Brain.html
  This one is really cool because it is basically my paper, so this is the one that I will be getting most of my information from. I will also be using some of this articles sources as well. (I think this was luck on my part by finding this...im really glad I did because I can use this as a format for my paper, and I can find my sources much easier)
  
• http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1258168
  This one helps because it talks about how certain songs trigger memories and why this happens (for as much as we know). This one does not have citations because it was an interview, so I will be taking notes on this and using those notes as points in my paper. Those notes will not be the only points I use, some of them will be used as clarifying information for some other point I made.
  
• http://media.www.iowastatedaily.com/media/storage/paper818/news/1999/09/30/UndefinedSection/Can-Music.Make.You.Smarter-1077044.shtml
  This one I find particularly interesting because it starts out with the dorm room example. That just brought me in the article right away. Most people say that it's only classical music that makes the brain increase, but here he is stating that maybe it is any type of music that can make you smarter.

• http://clearlyexplained.com/news/nature/2006/jun/1N2806_06.html
  This one states that there is more grey matter in the right hemisphere of the brain and that causes more neuroactivity which in turn makes you smarter.

bibliography...rough draft

• Demorest,Steven M.; Steven J. Morrison. Music Educators Journal, Vol. 87, No. 2, Special Focus: Music and the Brain. (Sep. 2000), pp. 33-39+58.

This article explores some of the research studies that have proposed connections between musical involvement and general inteligence. Morrison and Demorest explored two series of studies in detail. The first series documents a short-term increase in performance on a spatial reasoning task after listening to Mozart, often referrred as "the Mozart Effect". The second series concluded that piano instruction caused preschoolers to improve on a single test or spatial reasoning ability. The research analyzed how long and when the most improvement would occur.

In my paper I will use these studies as my primary source to enforce my point that music does make you smarter, but it depends on how early you have music instruction. For my secondary source I will use questions I have asked students who are musicians and non musicians.