The Effects of Music on Cognitive Development

For years it has been the common notion that it is beneficial for children to be exposed to music at a very young age, specifically musical training. Testing whether or not this statement is true, several studies over the years have found correlations between childrens' performance in school and musical training. However, the exact outcomes of these effects on brain development, and how concrete music's effect on development is, was something that had very little knowledge until more recently. Dr. Nina Kraus, of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University, gave a talk at Loyola University of Chicago, detailing her recent research designed to specifically learn more about the lasting effects of music on development.

In this research experiment, Kraus grouped adults into three groups: those with no musical training (control group), and two experimental groups of those with little musical training and those with more extensive musical training. However, to test on lasting developmental effects, all of the subjects with musical training must have had their training during childhood. Kraus then tested these adults on how quickly their brainstems responded to consonant-vowel transitions, indicating an auditory response. The research found that on average, adults with the most musical training responded fastest, while those with no musical training responded the slowest. These findings seem to show, at the very least, a strong correlation between musical training in childhood with cognitive performance.

What's even more telling about these research findings is that these adults had their musical training decades prior to the testing done in this research, yet they still performed better than those adults without any musical training. This evidence points to a relationship between music and development, where somehow, musical training may have effected the development of these adults when they were children, and that caused lasting effects. This has led Kraus to the conclusion that there are positive effects on the neural development of children who play musical instruments, leading to these lasting effects.

These findings of lasting effects of music on the brain are supported by other recent studies that have linked musical training and brain development. Ana Pinho of Karolinska Insitutet in Stockholm, Sweden, studied MRI scans of 39 pianists who showed more brain connectivity, specifically in the frontal lobe, when playing the piano.

Perhaps even stronger support of the lasting effects of music training on the brain were done by Yunxin Wang of the Beijing Normal University. In this research, young adults between ages 19-21 who received musical training as children were examined and the study found that certain areas of their brain were larger than normal, specifically when they received musical training before they turned seven years old. This seems to support Kraus' findings of permanent effects of musical training.

Thus, there is major evidence suggesting, if nothing more, that there is an extremely strong correlation between musical training and cognitive development. But as more and more evidence seems to be piling up, there is support that this relationship is more than just a correlation, and that perhaps musical training at a young age directly effects brain development. If this is the case, then it brings to play the importance of musical training as a child. More studies in support of these findings could create pressure for educational reforms to make musical training more of a priority, which is something Dr. Kraus supports.

Works Cited

Digital image. Http://blog.everhear.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/music-brain.jpeg. N.p., n.d. Web.

Digital image. Http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/7103066c-6f7d-11df-9f43-00144feabdc0.img. N.p., n.d. Web.

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

"Musical Training Shapes Brain Anatomy, Affects Function." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 Nov. 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.

Wang, Yunxin. "It Matters When You Start: The Age of Onset of Music Training Predicts Brain Anatomy." Society for Neuroscience (2013): n. pag. Online.