Music and intelligence: Do music lessions improve cognitive skills?

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© 2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

Music lessons can do good a child'south full general bookish skills, simply and then also tin art lessons. And so does music training evangelize whatever special cognitive benefits? Kids hone auditory skills that can help them decipher speech communication. And new research hints that certain kinds of music grooming may heave math and thinking skills.

Here are the details.

How music shapes the encephalon

Encephalon scanning technologies take permitted neuroscientists to detect the activity of living brains, and the results are clear: Musicians are different.

For instance, in i report, people who played musical instruments equally children showed more robust brainstem responses to audio than did non-musicians (Skoe and Kraus 2012).

Other studies have reported that kids assigned to receive musical training developed distinctive neural responses to music and speech, evidence of more intense data processing that was linked with improvements in the discrimination of pitch and the partitioning of voice communication (Moreno et al 2009; Chobert et al 2012; François et al 2012).

And it'southward not but a thing of differences in encephalon action. There are besides differences in brain book.

If you examine the brain of a keyboard thespian, you'll find that the region of the encephalon that controls finger movements is enlarged (Pascual-Leone 2001).

Moreover, brain scans of ix- to eleven-year old children take revealed that those kids who play musical instruments take significantly more grayness matter book in both the sensorimotor cortex and the occipital lobes (Schlaug et al 2005).

In fact, musicians accept significantly more grey matter in several brain regions (Schlaug et al 2005), and the effects of music lessons seem to increase with the intensity of training.

One study compared professional person keyboard players with amateurs. Although both groups had music training, the professionals skillful twice every bit much. The professionals besides had significantly more than grey matter book in a number of encephalon regions (Gaser and Schlaug 2003).

Is information technology merely a question of genetics?

Perchance these brain differences are what lead people to study music in the commencement place. People don't develop more grey matter because they undergo musical training. They merely happen to kickoff out with more gray matter, and this gives them an reward that makes musical preparation easier, or more enjoyable.

Can we attribute all encephalon differences to such pre-existing, individual variation?

That's a expert question, and we take an reply. Experiments confirm that the brain changes in response to music preparation (Schlaug 2015).

For example, in ane report, non-musicians were assigned to perform a 5-finger do on the pianoforte for two hours a day. Inside five days, subjects showed evidence of re-wiring. The size of the surface area associated with finger movements had go larger and more agile (Pascual-Leone 2001).

And then it'southward reasonable to think that the encephalon develops differently in response to music preparation. Only what do we know near links betwixt music and intelligence?

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First, we have the correlational prove.

If yous compare kids in the existent world, children who study music tend to perform better academically.

They tend to accept stronger verbal and mathematical skills. They tend to perform ameliorate on tests of working retention and cognitive flexibility. They even tend to have higher IQs (Fujioka et al 2006; Schellenberg 2006; Patel and Iverson 2007; Hanna-Pladdy and Mackay 2011).

Merely correlations don't prove causation, and at that place is reason to uncertainty that music training is responsible for these cognitive differences.

It's clear, for instance, that musical grooming is linked with affluence, and affluence gives kids many advantages for getting ahead in school.

Information technology'southward too possible that parents with greater cerebral power are more likely to enroll their kids in music lessons. And perhaps kids with higher academic ability are more than likely to seek out and stick with music lessons — because they discover the experience more rewarding (Schellenberg 2006).

To tease apart causation, we need an experimental approach. Ideally, we should begin with kids who have had no prior experience with music training. And so we should randomly assign some of these children to receive music lessons, and measure out outcomes. How exercise they compare with kids who aren't musically trained?

When researchers have attempted such experiments, they take often reported that kids end up with modest improvements in general cognitive ability. Improvements like better scores on tests of attention, retention, planning, and verbal ability.

Thus, experiments support the idea that musical grooming tin enhance the development of cognitive skills that aren't directly related to music-making. Merely go on in mind: Other types of cultural enrichment (like art classes) tin can take similar effects.

If we want to provide our children with "brainy" enrichment activities, musical training is just one of many.

So is there anything special near music preparation? Does musical training pb to bigger cognitive gains, for example? Or help kids in ways that other cultural activities don't?

Back in 2004, E. Glenn Schellenberg attempted to reply this question. In a study of 144 primary school students, he randomly-assigned six-year-olds to receive one of four treatments during the school year:

keyboard lessons
vocal lessons
drama lessons
no lessons

By the cease of the school year, all participants experienced a modest increment in IQ. However, the kids who received music lessons showed significantly more improvement than the other groups did (Schellenberg 2004).

A more recent study randomly assigned 230 primary schoolhouse students to receive either

group classes in music fundamentals, including some limited experiences with playing musical instruments in the classroom;
visual arts training, including lessons in painting, sculpture, and art history; and
no special training or enrichment.

After two years, kids who'd received the visual arts lessons outperformed their peers on tests of visual-spatial memory. But kids who'd received musical training tended to have college scores on tests of exact intelligence and planned, systematic problem-solving (Jaschke et al 2018).

And another, randomized written report reports that 8-year-onetime children showed enhanced reading and pitch discrimination abilities in oral communication after only 6 months of musical grooming. Kids in a control group (who took painting lessons instead) experienced no such improvements (Moreno et al 2009).

These studies lend acceptance to the notion that music training offers distinctive academic benefits. But at that place are numerous negative findings, too. And in a recent meta-assay — reviewing 54 studies published between 1986 and 2022 — researchers found picayune or no bear witness that musical training is superior to other types of cultural enrichment (Sala and Gobet 2020).

Even so, there'south reason to wonder. Equally noted above, ane report found that children developed an enhanced ability to discriminate different pitches in speech. That makes sense, given the auditory nature of both speech and music. Isn't it possible that musical training boosts other auditory skills, auditory skills that could help kids perform well at school?

Maybe so. For instance, after two years of musical training, students have shown improvements in their ability to pick out voice communication sounds from groundwork noise — a skill that might assist kids focus in noisy classrooms and other environments (Slater et al 2015; Tierney et al 2013).

And non all "musical training" is the aforementioned. Mayhap music lessons provide greater cognitive benefits when kids acquire to read music and play a musical instrument.

In many studies, researchers have tested only a rather casual class of music grooming — training that nosotros might characterize every bit "music appreciation" or "music sensitization." Kids larn a piffling about rhythm and music theory; they learn to place the sounds of different musical instruments; they sing and handclapping together; they become the chance to beat some drums, or play a melody on a recorder.

Such lessons can be enjoyable and beneficial. But how do they compare with more intense, rigorous grooming — the kind of musical grooming students get when they learn to read music, and play a complex musical instrument, like the violin?

Clara James and her colleagues recently investigated this question in an experiment involving 69 elementary school students.

Half the kids were randomly assigned to the sort of coincidental musical preparation mentioned above — music sensitization classes. The remaining half was randomly assigned to the more focused, rigorous sort of musical grooming: Twice each week, they learned to play a cord musical instrument in an orchestra class.

The researchers tested children at the commencement of the study, and again at the cease. Later two years of training, the kids who'd been assigned to orchestra grade were ahead on a variety of measures. They experienced bigger improvements in "working memory, attention, processing speed, cognitive flexibility, matrix reasoning, sensorimotor hand function, and bimanual coordination"(James et al 2020).

So this report provides the states with evidence that formal, rigorous music instruction — learning to read music and play a string instrument — has a bigger impact on general cognitive skills.

Where does this atomic number 82 us?

Music training can bring u.s. a lot of joy. It tin deepen our understanding of one of humanity's greatest forms of intellectual expression.

As a bonus, musical training programs also appear to assistance kids ameliorate certain non-musical, academic skills. But musical grooming isn't unique in this respect. Other cultural pursuits — similar art lessons — can also requite students an intellectual boost.

Does musical training offer any special cerebral advantages? That remains possible. Formal music training — the sort that teaches kids how to read music and play a complex musical instrument — requires kids to discriminate differences in pitch, and recognize distinct patterns of sound. It wouldn't be surprising if these skills led to enhanced perception of speech, and so far, studies back up the idea.

Similarly, students of music are required to

focus attention for long periods of fourth dimension;
decode a circuitous symbolic system (musical notation);
track and reproduce rhythms;
understand ratios and fractions (eastward.chiliad., a quarter note is one-half every bit long as a half note); and
improvise within a prepare of musical rules.

If kids strop such skills, might not their improvements transfer to other domains, similar language and mathematics (Schellenberg 2005; Shlaug et al 2005)? The written report by Clara James and her colleagues suggests that a 2 twelvemonth program of serious study might enhance working retention, attention, and problem solving skills.

And other researchers are testing to run into if music reading lessons can help elementary school kids amend their understanding of ratios and fractions. The early results expect promising (Azaryahu et al 2020).

So this remains an interesting area of research to follow. And meanwhile? We've got lots of adept reasons to encourage kids to study music.

Music and intelligence: Do music lessions improve cognitive skills?

© 2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

How music shapes the encephalon

And then it'southward reasonable to think that the encephalon develops differently in response to music preparation. Only what do we know near links betwixt music and intelligence?

So is there anything special near music preparation? Does musical training pb to bigger cognitive gains, for example? Or help kids in ways that other cultural activities don't?

And non all "musical training" is the aforementioned. Mayhap music lessons provide greater cognitive benefits when kids acquire to read music and play a musical instrument.

Where does this atomic number 82 us?

More reading nigh enhancing academic performance in children

References: Music and intelligence

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