Name That Tune

Play some toe-tapping tunes to toddlers and it may go straight to their brains. If University of California researchers are right, teaching music basics to babes opens their minds to science and math.

When neurobiologist Frances Rauscher, Ph.D., tested the reasoning ability of three-year-olds, she found them sorely lacking. But after three months of music lessons, they were snapping together puzzles and blocks quite adeptly.

Music "exercises" basic inborn neural connections related to abstract reasoning, Rauscher believes. Meanwhile, her colleagues are trying to uncover the brain's inherent spatial-temporal firing patterns.

In her studies, kids from three different schools all tested better after music regardless of socioeconomic status. They'd upscaled their brains with rhythmic beats learned on a keyboard-musical push-ups for the mind. "Consider music as a sort of prelanguage which, at an early age, excites the inherent brain patterns and enhances their use in other higher cognitive functions," says Rauscher.

If shaking maracas to "Ba Ba Black Sheep" in diapers paves the way to acing algebra and winning at chess later on, the effect is continual. Listening to music can sharpen spatial skills throughout life.

Rauscher recently played some Mozart concertos to Irvine collegians and, just as predicted, they whizzed through math homework afterwards. It's the linear and patterned format of his pieces like Eine Kleine Nachtmusik that put people in that mathy frame of mind. Mozart's musical passages repeat themselves in a very logical and rhythmic way.

If her musical three-year-olds continue to out-perform their age mates on tests of intelligence, Rauscher thinks music can help revolutionize education. At the very least, she'd bump music up from extracurricular bore to a required part of lesson plans.

PHOTO: Early music lessons for kids might just help them with math homework, too.