Here's an old paper[pdf] that studies the relationship between listening to music and other "higher brain" functions. More precisely it studied the effects of listening to Mozart music (which isn't "ambient" nor "baroque") for 10 mins.
From the paper:
There are correlational, historical and anecdotal relationships between music cognition and other 'higher brain functions', but no causal relationship has been demonstrated between music cognition and cognitions pertaining to abstract operations such as mathematical or spatial reasoning.