REPOST: This is your brain on a musical instrument

According to a new research published on this article from USA Today, children who play an instrument show a stronger "neurophysiological distinction" among certain sounds compared to children who just simply listen to music.

(Photo: Michael Penn AP) | Image Source: usatoday.com

Learning to play a musical instrument produces such profound changes in children's brains that kids actually can hear and process sounds they couldn't hear otherwise, according to researchers using high-tech sensors.

The findings, published Tuesday, could provide a boost to music education programs that invite kids to play instruments rather than simply listen to music.

The study, by researchers at Northwestern University, examined a community music program serving low-income children in Los Angeles. They attached special electrodes to children's scalps and measured how their brains responded to sounds. The children's average age was about 8.

Researchers found that those who played an instrument for two years showed a stronger "neurophysiological distinction" between certain sounds than children who didn't get the instrumental training. For instance, the music-makers more easily could tell the difference between the words "bill" and "pill," a key skill in learning to read.

The Los Angeles program already has shown improved academic results for kids, and the new research may offer an explanation, or at least part of one. The study found that the more hours kids played, the greater the neurological benefit.

"We're really able to measure what the nervous system has become, based on the experience that these children have had with sound," said Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern who led the research.

The new findings, she said, shouldn't be confused with those reported years earlier on the cognitive benefits of listening to certain types of music. The so-called "Mozart Effect" involved listening, not playing a musical instrument. "It turns out that playing a musical instrument is important," Kraus said. "We don't see these kinds of biological changes in people who are just listening to music, who are not playing an instrument. I like to give the analogy that you're not going to become physically fit just by watching sports."

She isn't sure why the difference is so pronounced but noted that playing music involves "not just the information that comes through our ears." Musicians experience the music through their fingers and throughout their bodies. And the work required to learn to play an instrument engages the brain's cognitive, sensory and reward circuits. The new research, she said, "is the tip of the iceberg."

 More articles about the benefits of music can be read by visiting this Mark Begelman blog site.

REPOST: New Evidence of Mental Benefits From Music Training

Music helps by mentally stimulating the brain. This post from Psmag.com features a study that proves how learning music helps children achieve academic excellence.

Image Source: psmag.com

 
As we’ve reported, a large body of research has noted a link between music education and higher test scores. But precisely why learning an instrument would have a positive impact on academic achievement has never been clear.

A new study from Boston Children’s Hospital provides a possible answer. It reports musical training may promote the development and maintenance of a key set of mental skills.

These executive functions, which are coordinated in the brain’s frontal lobe, “allow for planned, controlled behavior,” writes a research team led by Harvard University scholar Nadine Gaab. They enable us to manage our time and attention, organize our thoughts, and regulate our behavior—abilities that are crucial to success in school, as well as later life.

In an experiment featuring two separate groups of test subjects—one consisting of children, the other of adults—Gaab and her colleagues discovered a link between early musical training and heightened executive functioning. This, they argue, could explain “the previously reported links between musical training and enhanced cognitive skills.”

In the online journal PLoS One, they describe a study featuring 30 adults between the ages of 18 and 35 (15 working musicians, and 15 non-musicians), and 27 children between the ages of nine and 12 (15 of whom had at least two years of musical training).

All performed a series of tasks to measure various facets of cognitive ability, including verbal fluency, mental processing speed, and working memory—the crucial ability to hold several ideas in your mind at the same time. In addition, the children performed a separate mental task while their brains were scanned using fMRI technology.

The key result: “Children and adults with extensive musical training show enhanced performance on a number of executive-function constructs compared to non-musicians,” the researchers write, “especially for cognitive flexibility, working memory, and processing speed.”

The musically trained children showed “heightened activation in traditional executive-function regions” of the brain during a task-switching exercise, they report, along with “enhanced performance on measures of verbal fluency.”

Gaab and her colleagues caution that more research will be needed to show causation. The chicken-and-egg question has been raised in the past in regard to music and the brain, and these results don’t definitively answer it: It’s possible that kids with higher levels of executive functioning are more likely to be drawn to studying music.

Longitudinal studies, measuring executive functioning before music training begins, will presumably be required to definitively answer that question. But the very real possibility that music training boosts executive functioning provides another argument for the importance of music education.

“Replacing music programs with reading or math instruction in our nation’s school curricula in order to boost standardized test scores,” the researchers warn, “may actually lead to deficient skills in other cognitive areas.”

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Fired up: The effects of music on athletic performance

Image Source: drprem.com

Gyms, jogging tracks, and cycling paths are full of people listening to music via their iPods or other portable music devices. Professional fighters walk to the ring to the sound of their entrance song. Most exercisers agree that music makes them feel less tired during their workouts, but research shows that music has a great impact on athletic performance.

Image Source: exercise-and-sport-psychology.blogspot.com

In 2003, a study explored the effects of music on athletic performance by observing how a group of cyclists responded when listening to fast-paced music while using a stationary bicycle compared to the control group with no music. The results showed that the cyclists who listened to fast, upbeat music cycled faster in the first few kilometers and the final stretch when compared to the control group. Another study done in 2009 explored how tempo affected athletic performance. In this study, a group of cyclists was asked to listen to a set of six songs in three separate trials. In one of the trials, when the tempo was increased by 10 percent, the cyclists pedaled harder and faster, and their heart rates increased. In another trial, when the tempo was decreased by 10 percent, their heart rates fell and their pedaling slowed.

Image Source: blogs.americaeconomia.com

According to Costas Karageorghis, Ph.D., a researcher at the Brutel University School of Sport and Education in London, music can be like "a type of legal performance-enhancing drug." However, the exact reason that music seems to affect athletic performance is not fully known, partly because its effects can be both psychological and physiological. But most of the existing research on the effects of music on exercise indicates that increased motivation is the reason for improved athletic performance.

Ordinary individuals can reap the benefits of these studies and give themselves a performance boost simply by listening to their favorite songs while exercising.  

Find more articles on the benefits of music by visiting this Mark Begelman blog.