You have probably heard of the Mozart effect. It's the idea that if children or even babies listen to music composed by Mozart, they will become more intelligent. A quick Internet search exposes plenty of products to assist you in the task. Whatever your age, there are CDs and books to help you taste the power of Mozart's music, but when it comes to scientific evidence that it can make you more clever, the picture is more mixed.

         The phrase “the Mozart effect” was made up in 1991, but it was a study described two years later in the journal Nature that sparked(激发) real media and public interest about the idea that listening to classical music somehow improves the brain. It is one of those ideas that sound reasonable. Mozart was undoubtedly a genius himself; his music is complex and there is a hope that if we listen to enough of it, we'll become more intelligent.

         The_idea_took_off,_with thousands of parents playing Mozart to their children, and in 1998 Zell Miller, the Governor of the state of Georgia in the US, even asked for money to be set aside in the state budget so that every newborn baby could be sent a CD of classical music. It was not just babies and children who were exposed to Mozart's music on purpose. Even an Italian farmer proudly explained that the cows were played Mozart three times a day to help them produce better milk.

         I'll leave the debate on the effect on milk yield to farmers, but what about the evidence that listening to Mozart makes people more intelligent? More research was carried out but an analysis of sixteen different studies confirmed that listening to music does lead to a temporary improvement in the ability to handle shapes mentally, but the benefits are short­lived and it doesn't make us more intelligent.