Image yourself sitting in front of a warm fire on a late November evening, Chopin playing softly in the background, not a care in the world. Did you ever image that as the soft music is filling the air, your neural activity may also be heightened? You may not know it, but as the music plays, so do your emotions. Simply listening to music can trigger memories and cause a change in emotion. I suppose a common example of this occurs when you are watching a horror movie and the music becomes darker, faster, and louder. You feel a sense of adrenaline running through your body as you scream out, “No don’t go in there!” Music also shapes the way we reason. Like most other development, this begins at a young age. Scientific evidence suggests that even a small amount of musical teaching can shape the way our brains develop. As youth develops, musical training can improve their ability to distinguish sounds and advance overall speech (Wilcox 2012).
Studies have found many positive effects as a result of children’s development through musical education. If musical education is sustained throughout youth and into maturation, there is an even greater amount of positive neurological effects. Studies show those who encompass musical abilities also have a greater ability to understand foreign languages due to the ability to detect pitch differences. Gary Marcus, author of Guitar Zero, further explains the ability of musicians to detect pitch at a more advanced level in comparison to those who have not been exposed to musical education. Marcus explains that musicians develop a sense of hearing that is specific to certain pitches and frequencies (Marcus 20-22). This is key to mastering the greatest musicians ever known depend on this ability to produce the correct sound as they cannot read or write music themselves (Marcus 164-166).Do these positive neurological effects apply to those who have only have limited musical experience? A team of scientists from the Northwestern University Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory have found that answer to be indeed, “yes.” In a study involving forty-five adults, the researchers found that musical education had a large impact on their response to certain sounds. Even those with little musical training still had the ability to process certain sounds.
It is very important for children to discern certain sounds from others during development. Being able to detect specific frequencies over others is crucial for speech development. Other auditory functions depend on this ability, and without it brain functioning in these areas may not be as functional as it could be. Studies show that children with exposure to musical education tend to express better reading and mathematical skills. Performance on intelligence testing is also higher (Wilcox 2012). Gary Marcus explains that children who are exposed to musical training show more growth in areas of the brain that control hand movements. Also, the corpus callosum and the right primary auditory area show increased growth. (Marcus 21). Marcus calls on certain brain studies to also explain that children who have had musical training can better detect variations in rhythm and possess greater motor skills. Exposure at an earlier age requires a lot less “brain rewiring” as Marcus puts it (Marcus 22). Musical exposure is not only a fun and rewarding experience for children, it can be extremely beneficial in the end. So, the next time you are sitting in your living room relaxing to the soft sounds of Chopin, think about how music truly can be the key to auditory intelligence.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2012/08/21/even-a-few-years-of-music-training-benefits-the-brain/
Marcus.Gary F. Guitar Zero. New York: The Penguin Press. 2012. 1-202. Print.
http://earthtones.org/index/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/music-and-brain.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment