Environmental Influences of Language and Music on the Developing Brain

 

Understanding influences on human brain development is of much interest, especially as it relates to cognition and functional implications from brain structures. Environmental influences affecting neural reconfiguration are important to understand, especially with implications to child psychological development. Factors impacting brain development were explored in our seminar by Berken et al. examining the relationship with bilingualism early in life and later language acquisition.

In “Early bilingualism, language attainment, and brain development”, Berken et al. used neuroimaging to compare neuroplasticity with language attainment. It was concluded that the age of language acquisition of bilinguals influenced brain structure and function and how efficient information processing was maximized. Relating to the timing of early language experience, Berken et al. found that the timing, within the first few years of life when the brain is actively developing, early sensory experience had the greatest capacity to strengthen neural circuitry. This finding related to one of the publications influencing Berken et al.’s interest in brain development and auditory stimulation, as one of the earliest groups studied using brain imaging techniques was on professional musicians (Bermudez et al., 2009; Amunts et al., 1997; Schlaug et al., 1995a, 1995b).

Studying the effects of music on the brain has similarly been of important interest to many people, especially with the cultural relevance of music across all of humanity. The relationship between music and language is an interesting connection and referenced in papers, as mentioned above, but those studies frame their subjects around adult professional musicians. Hyde et al. focuses on the developmental aspect in “Musical Training Shapes Structural Brain Development”. This study similarly explains the phenomenon of the human brain responding to environmental demands. Studying music is an intense multisensory experience that engages the brain and encourages plasticity in the developing brain. It was found that after only 15 months of musical training during early childhood, overlapping age ranges studied in early bilinguals, structural brain changes were correlated with an improvement in motor and auditory skills, and the authors concluded that eventual brain differences in musician compared to non-musician adults were attributed to the training-induced brain plasticity. Hyde et al. found there were brain deformations in frontal, temporal, and parieto-occipital brain areas specifically, but what was most interesting were correlations noted between the brain and behavioral changes of the children studied, encouraging future directions to investigate this connection. The behavioral changes included significant differences between the musically trained and non-musical children in not only finger motor sequencing, but also interestingly in vocabulary scores!

While there is much to be connected between the two areas of language and music research, there is clear intrigue of their influence on each other, especially when contributing to the environmental influences of auditory stimulation on the developing brain. Implications from bilingualism and studying music may provide further insight from brain structure to eventual cognitive studies of creativity and functions associated with structurally changed brain regions.

1.     Berken, J.A., Gracco, V. L., & Klein, D. (2017). Early bilingualism, language attainment, and brain development. Neurospcyholgia. (98). 220-227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.08.031

2.     Hyde, K. L., Lerch, J., Norton, A., Forgeard, M., Winner, E., Evans, A. C., Schlaug, G., (2009). Musical Training Shapes Structural Brain Development. Journal of Neuroscience. (10). 3019-3025. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5118-08.2009