Expand Your Brain

EXPAND YOUR BRAIN POTENTIAL
WITH THE POWER OF MUSIC & CHESS...

"It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery of
the theory of relativity was the result of
musical perception."
--Albert Einstein
He began playing the violin at age 6.

Excerpt from “A Musical Fix for American Schools”
(Wall Street Journal)

"A growing body of evidence suggests that music could trump many of the much more expensive “fixes” that we have thrown at the education system.

Plenty of outstanding achievers have attributed at least some of their success to music study. Stanford University’s Thomas Sudhof, who won the Nobel Prize in medicine last year, gave credit to his bassoon teacher. Albert Einstein, who began playing the violin at age 6, said his discovery of the theory of relativity was “the result of musical perception.”

Until recently, though, it has been a chicken-and-egg question: Are smart, ambitious people naturally attracted to music? Or does music make them smart and ambitious? And do musically trained students fare better academically because they tend to come from more affluent, better educated families?

New research provides some intriguing answers. Music is no cure-all, nor is it likely to turn your child into a Nobel Prize winner. But there is compelling evidence that it can boost children’s academic performance and help fix some of our schools’ most intractable problems."

Click here for the full article.

Music can induce a mood of concentration, filter out distractions, prolong ATTENTION SPAN, AND ENCODE INFORMATION IN MEMORY AND IMPROVE ITS RECALL. WHEN YOU NEED TO DO YOUR BEST BRAINWORK, MUSIC CAN PRIME AND SHARPEN YOUR MIND. BECAUSE MUSIC IS PROCESSED ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BRAIN, LISTENING TO IT PRIMES YOUR MIND TO BE BOTH ARTIST AND SCIENTIST, INTUITIVE AND LOGICAL.

CHESS IS A THINKING GAME. IT WILL EXPAND YOUR MIND, CREATING A BIGGER MEMORY AREA. AS THE MEMORY AREA OF THE BRAIN GETS EXPANDED, THE MIND IS ALSO SAID TO EXPAND AND INCORPORATE NEW IDEAS AND THINKING SKILLS SUCH AS CRITICAL THINKING, OUT OF THE BOX THINKING, LATERAL THINKING, DECISION-MAKING, AnALYZING AND VISUALIZING. PLAYING CHESS REGULARLY ALSO HELPS IN KEEPING YOU ALERT AT ALL TIMES, HAVE A SHARP MIND AND IMPROVE INTELLIGENCE.

-Thom & Pam Lawrence, whose entire family (three children and parents) have been taking lessons at European School of Music for 15 years

Connection between
music and chess...

The connection between music and chess has long been recognized, and many great musicians have also been chess players. Chopin, Beethoven, Mendelsohn, and Prokofiev are only a few of great composers who excelled at chess...but would you be surprised to learn that the list includes Ray Charles, John Lennon, and Bono, the lead singer of the Irish Rock Group U2? Members of the popular band "Phish" have even taken a chess game on tour, playing their audience with one move at each concert!
We believe that both disciplines expand the mind and the spirit in similar ways - ways that carry into all aspects of our lives , and provide the highest-level creative outlets for adults and children alike.

Music and chess instruction at the European School of Music develop:

Logical thought processes
Powers of concentration
Self-discipline
Self-esteem and self-confidence
Perseverance and tenacity
Mathematical reasoning skills
Creative and intuitive capacity
Long lasting love for music and chess

.... and all this while having fun!
The development of these positive skills through music and chess enhances other aspects of life including all forms of education.

"Music benefits the brain, research reveals" (Natural News)

(NaturalNews) Northwestern University scientists have pulled together a review of research into what music -- specifically, learning to play music -- does to humans. The result shows music training does far more than allow us to entertain ourselves and others by playing an instrument or singing. Instead, it actually changes our brains.

The paper, just published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, is a compilation of research findings from scientists all over the world who used all kinds of research methods. The bottom line to all these studies: musical training has a profound impact on other skills including speech and language, memory and attention, and even the ability to convey emotions vocally.

So what is it that musical training does? According to the Northwestern scientists, the findings strongly indicate it adds new neural connections -- and that primes the brain for other forms of human communication.

In fact, actively working with musical sounds enhances neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to adapt and change. "A musician's brain selectively enhances information-bearing elements in sound. In a beautiful interrelationship between sensory and cognitive processes, the nervous system makes associations between complex sounds and what they mean," Nina Kraus, lead author of the Nature paper and director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, explained in a statement to the media. "The efficient sound-to-meaning connections are important not only for music but for other aspects of communication."

For example, researchers have found that musicians are better than non-musicians in learning to incorporate sound patterns for a new language into words. Their brains also appear to be primed to comprehend speech in a noisy background.

What's more, children who have had music lessons tend to have a larger vocabulary and better reading ability than youngsters who haven't had any musical training. And children with learning disabilities, who often have a hard time focusing when there's a lot of background noise, may be especially helped by music lessons. "Music training seems to strengthen the same neural processes that often are deficient in individuals with developmental dyslexia or who have difficulty hearing speech in noise," Dr. Kraus stated.

The Northwestern researchers concluded their findings make a case for including music in school curriculums. "The effect of music training suggests that, akin to physical exercise and its impact on body fitness, music is a resource that tones the brain for auditory fitness and thus requires society to re-examine the role of music in shaping individual development," they wrote.

In addition to musical training, listening to music has also been shown to have some remarkable beneficial effects on the body. For example, as NaturalNews has previously reported, Tel Aviv University scientists found that premature infants exposed to thirty minutes of Mozart's music daily grew far more rapidly than premature babies not exposed to classical music and researchers at the University of Florence in Italy documented that listening to classical, Celtic or Indian (raga) music once a day for four weeks significantly reduced the blood pressure in people suffering from hypertension.