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Listening to particular pieces of music can enhance learning and improve performance in exams. Called the "Mozart effect", the link between listening and spatial ability is controversial, but worth pursuing, writes Professor John Jenkins, in the April Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Research done in 1993 found pre-school children's spatial reasoning improved when they listened to Mozart's piano sonata K448. Since then, other researchers have shown that Bach and some contemporary music has the same effect. Particularly valuable is a piece by the Greco-American pianist/ composer Yanni, who writes instrumental "new age" music with similar structure to K448.