Composer Thomas Schoenberger's Sophia Musik effect on the brain?

Question

Thomas Schoenberger claims his 'Sophia Musik' (the Ultimate Baby CDs) hav many beneficial effects on the brain. Are you aware of this prolific composer and have any advice regarding his musical claims?

Answer 1

Ok. After some additional information has come to light in the comments - initially from @StevenJeuris and through further assistance from @Eff - things look a little different.

Although there was an accepted phenomenon called the Mozart Effect (Rauscher, et al. 1993), the term Schoenberger Effect was coined by Thomas Schoenberger himself and there are no studies I can find to back his claims. The Mozart Effect was debunked through a 16 year meta-analysis by Pietschnig, et al. (2010) and so the chances of the Schoenberger Effect being valid are slim in my view.

Thomas Schoenberger's blog article titled Music for Infants states that he

was inspired to write music for infants with the birth of his son, Wolfgang. Schoenberger’s work for infants is composed in the style of musical compositions shown to stimulate the portion of the child’s brain associated with special skills such as music, mathematics, and chess.

The CD cover image provided in the article describes the effect as the Schoenberger Effect and claims to be endorsed by Stevanne Auerbach, also known as Dr. Toy

Looking at the Schoenberger Effect, there is a Cision PRWeb article (Shaw, 2002) which links this term to the Mozart Effect

Back in 1993, U.C. Irvine professor Gordan Shaw started the trend when both He and Dr. Helen Raucher coined the term "Mozart Effect" to describe the powerful effect [certain] classical music has in neural development of infants and babies. Since then, "Mozart Effect" products have glutted the baby market, with most of these products having no connection with the actual research done by Raucher and Shaw.

See Rauscher, et al. (1993) for details on their study.

Further into Shaw (2002), he states that the Ultimate Baby CD became an underground best seller largely through word of mouth

which lends credibility to the "Schoenberger Effect" phenomenon. After all, if mother's swear by it's effects on their own children, there must be some type of reaction present. I listened to the Cd several times and was impressed with the "Bach meets Mozart" quality of the pieces. It's obvious that Schoenberger has tremendous talent as a melodic composer. It' also clear that something is going on with this music that separates it from the rest of the Mozart Effect products. This Cd appears to have some effect on babies. What exactly that effect is remains to be diagnosed by further scientific studies.

When you couple this with, Pietschnig, et al. (2010) who said

[F]ormal tests yielded evidence for confounding publication bias, requiring downward correction of effects. The central finding of the present paper however, is certainly the noticeably higher overall effect in studies performed by Rauscher and colleagues than in studies performed by other researchers, indicating systematically moderating effects of lab affiliation. On the whole, there is little evidence left for a specific, performance-enhancing Mozart effect.

it seems that although there maybe anecdotal evidence for it's effects, the idea that music can have positive effects on infant neural development does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

References

Pietschnig, J., Voracek, M., & Formann, A. K. (2010). Mozart effect–Shmozart effect: A meta-analysis. Intelligence, 38(3), 314-323. doi: 10.1016/j.intell.2010.03.001

Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, C. N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Nature, 365(6447), 611. doi: 10.1038/365611a0 pmid: 8413624

Shaw, F. (2002). The mysterious "Schoenberger effect" Fact or fiction? Retrieved from: https://www.prweb.com/releases/2002/12/prweb52834.htm