Simply put, spatial thinking is the perception and recall of objects and their positions in three-dimensional space. People with strong spatial-thinking ability, for example, have a keen sense of direction and rarely drive in the wrong direction or forget where they parked their cars. Spatial thinking is an important skill in the physical and social sciences. For example, the discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 required the ability to visualize a DNA strand as a three-dimensional object in space.
A variety of research indicates that music is linked to the development of spatial thinking in children. Furthermore, studies also demonstrate that children with strong spatial skills will typically perform well at math. A baby will begin to use spatial reasoning from birth as she experiences the size of objects and the distance she is from them. This ability develops continually until the age of 10 or so, and the concepts a child learns about space as a toddler will lay the foundation for the development of more advanced skills later in life. Playing classical music for a child has been found to enhance brain development and researchers believe the complexity of this type of music can prepare the brain to solve spatial problems.
An example of the way music effects the brain can be seen in the way you can solve a jigsaw puzzle faster when listening to music. This is because listening to music primes the brain to think spatially, but this improvement in spatial thinking only lasts for a short period after the music stops. Classical music has been shown to open neural pathways more effectively than other types of music, preparing the brain to solve spatial problems.
In the early 1990s, an experiment found that listening to classical music could also improve memory. This eventually came to be known as the "Mozart Effect," because the song used in the experiment was written by composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The original experiment, conducted in 1993 at the University of California at Irvine, tracked the results of 10 students who listened to either Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D major, a relaxation tape or silence. Immediately after listening, students took a spatial-reasoning test. The results indicated that those who listened to Mozart performed better than those who didn't. The research also found that the effects of the music only lasted up to 15 minutes.