The Benefits of Playing a Musical Instrument

A recent group of studies presented at the Society of Neuroscience have evidence showing the positive affects of musical training on an individuals brain. The studies showed the affects of musical training on the structure and function of the brain, how the music affected different parts of the brain, how those different parts of the brain communicated with one another while the individual was playing or listening to the music and how the brain understood and processed various sensory stimulus while playing music.

The Society of Neuroscience moderator Dr. Gottfried Schlaug said, "Playing a musical instrument is a multi sensory and motor experience that creates emotions and motions- from finger tapping to dancing- and engages pleasure and reward systems in the brain. It has the potential to change brain function and structure when done over a long period of time." Dr. Schlaug went on to say, "Intense musical training generates new processes within the brain, at different stages of life, and with a range of impacts on creativity, cognition and learning."

Additionally, a study out of Beijing Normal University in China said that musical training at a young age may help a child improve his or her brain, especially in areas of language skills and decision making. Presenter Yunxin Wang had this to say, "Early musical training does more good for kids than just making it easier for them to enjoy music; it changes their brain and these brain changes could lead to cognitive advances as well."

The comments above go hand and hand with the research of Dr. Nina Kraus. In November, Dr. Kraus a professor and researcher at Northwestern came and presented her work on "Music training for the development of auditory skills". Dr. Kraus from Northwestern's School of Communication talked about the benefits of playing a musical instrument for an individuals auditory processing. A person that plays a musical instrument has a better understanding of how to translate sound patterns of a new language into actual words. Dr. Kraus also writes children who are musically trained have better vocabularies and have greater reading abilities than non musically trained children. Another point that Dr. Kraus makes is that the neural activation of children that are musically trained is superior to non-musically trained children and what this does is allow musician trained children to have better speech and language recognition skills. In addition there is also a correlation between reading ability and auditory skills, as one that studies music has the ability to process more information and read at a faster rate then a non-musicain. Dr. Kraus discusses how musicians have better speech-noise recognition as well, which allows an individual to be able to better recognize the voice of someone they know in a noisy environment. 

It's amazing to see what playing a musical instrument does for a child as he or she grows up. Playing an instrument changes the brain's function and recognition patterns, allows the brain to have a better working memory, and allows the individual to become more creative. Also, the musicians brain can focus better when it comes to tasks in school and thus they are able to maximize their learning abilities through musical training. There are a lot of benefits that come with learning how to play a musical instrument, thus it is important that we try and improve the education system to show the importance of a child learning how to play a musical instrument. Based on the  global studies by researchers and Dr. Kraus's studies, we are now finding out the benefits of playing a musical instrument. 

References:

Kraus, Nina, and Bharath Chandrasekaran. "Music Training for the Development of Auditory Skills." Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11.8 (2010): 599-605. Online.

"More Evidence That Music Benefits the Brain." Medscape Log In. Medscape, 18 Nov. 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.

Wang, Y., Xei, L., Zhu, B., Liu, Q., and Dong, Q. (2013). Starting Age of Musical Training Affects the Brain Anatomy.  Program No. 765.07, Neuroscience 2013 Abstracts, San Diego, CA: Society for Neuroscience, Online.