Music: Your Brain's Workout

As we go through our lives, especially as children, we have a tendency to complain about one thing or another that we are learning. "When will I ever need Trigonometry?" "What do I care about poetry?" "How will this art class help me in the future?" I'm sure that's what us nonmusical children asked ourselves in our grade school music classes too. It turns out, however, that at least in the case of music there are some beneficial long-lasting effects. 

The benefit of playing music is something that Marcus touches on in his book. He only spends about a page on the idea in his "Heavy Metal" chapter, but it is enough to get me thinking about if our parents are right when they tell us to "keep that noise down" as we bang on our drums or strum our guitars with our garage bands. Marcus suggests a correlation with higher IQs and taking music lessons but is hesitant to say which came first. However, I think this is too broad a reflection.

Reading through my daily news barely a month ago, I stumbled upon an article that discussed some research regarding long term benefits that Marcus mentions we don't have enough of. I'll provide the link to the article below, but here's the gist of it. Recent studies done at Northwestern and the University of California indicate that there are lasting effects of taking music lessons at a young age, even after the lessons have stopped. Perri Klass, the author of the article, tells us that the studies demonstrated the ability of students that had lessons as children to be better able to break down complex sounds into their most basic elements, even if they hadn't had a lesson in years.  

During her interview with Nina Kraus, the director of an auditory lab at Northwestern, Klass finds out that her studies suggested learning how to create music benefits language-based learning. Why? To play music one must be able to distinguish among many components of sound, something that becomes useful when learning how to pronounce every letter of every word while reading. In addition to this easier recognition of sound, there is also a strengthening of working memory, attention skills, and the ability to create meaningful connections to the sounds we hear. 

Turns out this isn't only important for the younger generation, but for the elderly as well. Marcus spends a great deal of time discussing how different age groups learn music, and Klass offers a benefit of this learning across the board. As we age, musicians and non-musicians alike see a decline in hearing and the functioning of auditory nerves. But because musician's brains have been completely rewired (the rewiring Marcus keeps referring to in the first few chapters as he's learning to play), they keep most of these brain functions that help them understand speech much better than the average non-musician at the same age!

Though we now have an idea of what making music does for us in terms of cognitive functioning, it's much harder to see its effects on the genetic level. Marcus goes back and forth on this idea of talent and skill being genetic or learned and concludes that it's a little bit of both. He spends some time in his book discussing perfect pitch, which researchers in San Francisco are trying to find a genetic link to. It's difficult to take something like music and try to isolate it in our genes because making music requires performing so many different tasks coded for by so many different genes. We may never be able to point to a gene and say that it's responsible for perfect pitch, but I think noticing the patterns in families (musical parents tend to bare musical offspring) indicates that some of us are just more predisposed to being better musicians.

While they have yet to find genetic factors responsible for some of these musical skills, the findings of these researchers demonstrate that children that are musically trained are able to better distinguish among tones they hear, and that their brains show much stronger responses when detecting specific sounds. The skills required for our brains to do this are improved the more we apply them, which may then translate to an increase in academic learning. 

This research, however, does not mean make your kid take clarinet lessons and he'll get straight A's. What it means is that practicing making and playing music utilizes the aspects of the brain related to memory, language, and sound, and the more you use anything, the stronger it becomes. Playing music is a work out for your brain! The earlier in life you start working it out, the better. Marcus successfully argues that there is no cut off age for learning, but he recognizes that something a teen can accomplish in a matter of days may take him half a year! Though there are benefits to learning something new, such as playing an instrument, at any age, the earlier this rewiring and strengthening of the brain happens, the more time you have to utilize its benefits.

Not only is being musical an enjoyable experience, it's good for you too! Old or young, pick up an instrument and reap the benefits in a matter of years. So next time your teen's beat boxing or electric guitar is giving you a headache, resist the urge to tell him he's wasting his time; he may not know it, but it's doing wonders for his brain. 

http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20120915/NEWS0107/209150373/