Why Music?

My belief is that quality music education should be considered basic and fundamental to any education, and the earlier the better. I occasionally post articles, videos, etc. that support this idea.

Mental benefits of music lessons echo years after practice ends

By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles TimesFor the Booster Shots Blog

August 21, 2012, 11:00 a.m.

Lapsed musical instrumentalists (and their disappointed parents): Take heart! The child that gets even a few years of formal musical training before quitting those weekly lessons continues to show evidence that his or her brain has been changed in ways that improve mental function, says a new study.

The latest research found that even years after they stopped practicing, young adults who had taken as little as two or three years of instrumental music training in their elementary or middle-school years showed a more robust brain response to sounds than those who had no formal musical training. The study compared 30 former instrumental students to 15 young adults of similar age and intelligence who had had no music training.

The echo of music lessons past began to fade as adults grew more distant from their days of piano (or cello, trumpet or saxophone) lessons. But it was still there an average of seven years later, and whether the subject had taken three years of instrumental training or eight did not seem to make much difference in the strength of the effect.

The heightened neural response to sounds in a lab means something in the real world, past research suggests: Prior research has linked the kinds of brain signals seen in those with musical training to heightened auditory perception, better auditory-based communication skills and improved executive function. The last of these -- executive function -- encompasses such key learning skills as attention, organization, short-term memory and reasoning. So boosting that in enduring ways could arguably give the kid who took music lessons an academic edge for years after the lessons ended.

The study also suggests that formal musical training was not wasted, even when your budding Yo-Yo Ma or Lang-Langgives up the lessons in favor of, say, basketball, cheerleading or socializing. It does suggest that starting early in life and quitting late may confer a more lasting mental advantage. But even "a little" formal musical training, say the authors, "goes a long way."

...and here is the abstract of the article being discussed:

A Little Goes a Long Way: How the Adult Brain Is Shaped by Musical Training in Childhood

1. Erika Skoe¹,² and 
2. Nina Kraus¹,²,³,⁴,⁵

+Author Affiliations

1. ¹Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory,
2. ²Department of Communication Sciences,
3. ³Institute for Neuroscience,
4. ⁴Department of Neurobiology and Physiology, and
5. ⁵Department of Otolaryngology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208

1. Author contributions: E.S. and N.K. designed research; E.S. performed research; E.S. analyzed data; E.S. and N.K. wrote the paper.

Abstract

Playing a musical instrument changes the anatomy and function of the brain. But do these changes persist after music training stops? We probed this question by measuring auditory brainstem responses in a cohort of healthy young human adults with varying amounts of past musical training. We show that adults who received formal music instruction as children have more robust brainstem responses to sound than peers who never participated in music lessons and that the magnitude of the response correlates with how recently training ceased. Our results suggest that neural changes accompanying musical training during childhood are retained in adulthood. These findings advance our understanding of long-term neuroplasticity and have general implications for the development of effective auditory training programs.

• Received April 19, 2012.
• Revision received June 4, 2012.
• Accepted June 11, 2012.