This is the question that neuroscientists and psychiatrists recently addressed at the University of Ulm in Southern Germany. They conducted an experiment in which a sample of third grade children were subjected to multiple spelling, reading, and non-verbal intelligence tests. The population sample consisted only of boys, and included a mixture of students who either had or had not played an instrument since preschool. Approximately half of the boys were in the process of learning how to play an instrument. According to the experimenters Hille, Gust, Bitz, and Kammer, "Active music performance relies on a demanding action-perception loop calling for long periods of focused attention on dynamic visual, auditory, and motor signals." In other words, learning how to play an instrument is no simple task. It requires consistent practice, attentiveness, and dexterity. The results of the experiment showed a strong, positive correlation between early exposure to musical education and high test scores. Even if a child had a family member who played an instrument, they would show a lower test score than a child who had individually learned how to play an instrument. This suggests that mere exposure to music has no noticeable effect on cognitive abilities, but the process of learning how to play an instrument is linked to improved cognition as well as language development.The researchers found that children who played an instrument for three or more years had higher levels of school performance, vocabulary, and non-verbal reasoning than children with no musical training. Another study was performed which measured the cognitive effects of learning how to play a musical instrument in children who had played for approximately one year, but the results showed little variance between test scores of musical versus non-musical children.
Musical training may have a positive effect on children's language skills as well as their intellectual skills. The region of the brain that controls our auditory processing and motor coupling, or what we hear and speak, develops during childhood. Since learning how to play an instrument requires learning the skills of rhythm, pitch-matching, and reading music, musical training contributes to the fine-tuning of this region of the brain during development. Therefore, if a child develops their musical abilities over an extended period of time, they will enhance the function of their auditory cortex. Research has shown that these effects can last well into late adulthood.
Nina Kraus, a professor of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory of Northwestern University, has conducted experiments similar to that of the neuroscientists of the University of Ulm. Her results support the notion that musicians have stronger listening skills, a better auditory working memory, and enhanced cognitive and language skills. Dr. Kraus's research explains that these collective intellectual improvements are the result of 'neural synchrony,' or the pattern in which neurons fire in response to certain sounds. Practiced musicians tend to have better responses to sound as well as an enhanced ability to hear speech in noise. For instance, a musician would have the same hearing ability in a quiet room versus a noisy room, whereas a non-musician would struggle to hear speech in a noisy room. Neural synchrony can also be traced to improved reading skills. Kraus' musical training studies with children showed that tuning an instrument, memorizing sound or visual patterns, and the ability to improvise all contributed to the development of the child's auditory working memory. She also determined that neural tracking of sound patterns is important for language development, and thus, this skill is enhanced in musicians. Neural tracking of sound patterns improves only after years of musical training and experience, and is shown to be impaired in children afflicted with dyslexia.
What happens after you stop playing music? Does your brain continue to profit? The answer, according to Kraus, is yes- the brain preserves the benefits of musical training long after the initial learning process takes place. There is, however, experimental evidence which suggests that lifelong practice of an instrument is much more pervasive than training limited to a few years of musical practice during childhood. The neural processing of sound is much better in children who have had some musical education as opposed to those who didn't, and the benefits are even greater for those who continued to play instruments into their early and late adulthood. Older adult musicians have the same neural synchrony and consistency as a young adult with no background in music. The overall message of these studies encourages elementary schools to keep music classes in their curriculum and stresses the important effects that musical education can have on young, developing minds.References
Web article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3101523/
Images: http://www.heykiki.com/blog/2012/04/19/how-to-motivate-your-child-to-consistently-practice-piano/
http://auditory-cortex.com/
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/apr/02/classical-music-children
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