"This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year."
Laurel Trainor,
psychology professor, McMaster University
(WebMD) Music lessons may foster brain development and improve memory in young children.
Researchers have found that not only did the brains of young, musically trained children respond differently to hearing music, but musical training also appeared to improve the children's memories over the course of a year.
"That the children studying music for a year improved in musical listening skills more than children not studying music is perhaps not very surprising," says researcher Laurel Trainor, in a news release. "On the other hand, it is very interesting that the children taking music lessons improved more over the year on general memory skills that are correlated with nonmusical abilities such as literacy, verbal memory, visuospatial processing, mathematics, and IQ than did the children not taking lessons," says Trainor, a professor of psychology, neuroscience, and behavior at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario.
If further study confirms these results, it could give parents good reason to put up with the hongs and screeches of aspiring musicians.
In the study, published in Brain, researchers compared brain responses to music and other brain development measures in 12 children between the ages of 4 and 6 over the course of a year.
At the start of the study, half the children were enrolled in Suzuki music school; the other half did not take music lessons outside of school. Researchers found developmental differences between the two groups during the year-long study.
As expected, children taking music lessons showed greater improvements in melody, harmony, and rhythm processing than those not studying music. In addition, musically trained children showed a greater brain response to hearing a violin tone in an area of the brain involved in attention and sound discrimination.
But researchers also found that children taking music lessons showed greater improvement on a nonmusical general memory test in which they had to listen to a series of numbers, remember them, and then repeat them back.
"This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year. These changes are likely to be related to the cognitive benefit that is seen with musical training," says Trainor.
SOURCES: Fujioka, T. Brain, Sept. 20, 2006; Vol. 129: pp. 2593-2608. News release, Oxford University Press.
Sept. 20, 2006
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Music training boosts the brain | |||
Canadian scientists compared children aged four to six who took music lessons for a year with those who did not. They found the musical group performed better on a memory test also designed to assess general intelligence skills such as literacy and maths ability. The study, by McMaster University, is published online by the journal Brain.
The researchers also measured changes in the children's brain responses to sounds during the year. They found changes developed in the musical group in as little as four months. Previous studies have shown that older children given music lessons recorded greater improvements in IQ scores than children given drama lessons. But lead researcher Professor Laurel Trainor said: "This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year." Brain measurements The researchers focused on 12 children, six of whom attended a Suzuki music school, using a Japanese approach which encourages children to listen to and imitate music before they attempt to read it. The other six had no music lessons outside school. They measured brain activity using a technique called magnetoencephalography (MEG) while the children listened to two types of sounds: a violin tone and a white noise burst. All the children recorded larger responses when listening to the violin tones compared with the white noise - indicating more brain power was being deployed to process meaningful sounds. In addition, all children responded more quickly to the sounds over the course of the year of the study - suggesting a greater efficiency of the maturing brain. However, when the researchers focused on a specific measurement related to attention and sound discrimination, they found a greater change over the year among the Suzuki children. Professor Trainor said this difference, coupled with the better performance of the Suzuki children in the memory test suggested musical training was having a profound impact. He said: "It suggests that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention." Dr Takako Fujioka, of the Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute, also worked on the study. He said: "It is clear that music is good for children's cognitive development and that music should be part of the pre-school and primary school curriculum." The next phase of the study will look at the benefits of musical training in older adults. | |||
It is clear that music is good for children's cognitive development 
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