Neuroplasticity, and the language of music

     Everyone knows that the younger you are when you begin learning something, you will become better at it faster than someone who picks up that skill later on. How does that happen? Neuroplasticity refers to the way brain structures and synapses change as time goes on to create faster neural connections and increase proficiency at something. It was strongly believed for a while that neuroplastic connections could only occur at a very specific time period in one’s life, particularly in the early stages of childhood where brain connections would be permanently shaped, but after many years of research we have found that that’s not the case. This is actually something that happens over time and can continue to happen even after childhood, just at a potentially slower rate.

    In the research article “Early bilingualism, language attachment, and brain development”, Berken et al. studied neuroplasticity and used bilingualism as a model to show how differently the brain is wired when learning something in the early stages of life versus later. Language is a skill that humans learn almost immediately, and many times it can set up how well someone can learn a second language or how easily they can pick up a second skill. Page 221 states that newborns and fetuses can distinguish sounds and frequency changes which is pretty much a staple when learning a new language. 

The review article "How Musical Training Shapes the Adult Brain: Predisposition and Neuroplasticity" showed that another group of people that can provide significant data for this type of study is musicians. In addition to learning a language, musicians require lots of gray matter in both the temporal and frontal lobe in order to properly execute functions and have greater music memory retrieval to increase their quality of performance. There were many other findings but overall they proved that learning an instrument can influence the amount and organization of gray matter in multiple brain structures related to sensory processing and higher order cognitive function.

By learning a first language, one has already set the foundation up to learn more languages. If they are taught a second language early on, it is likely that the second language will be easier to learn, and sets up neural connections to make it easy to learn a musical instrument. When learning a musical instrument, brain structure and plasticity is vastly different and more efficient than someone who just knows one language.

Berken, J. (2021). Early bilingualism, language attainment, and brain development.

Olszewska AM, Gaca M, Herman AM, Jednoróg K and Marchewka A (2021) How Musical Training Shapes the Adult Brain: Predispositions and Neuroplasticity. Front. Neurosci. 15:630829. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.630829