Effects of Music Training on the Child's Brain and Cognitive Development

Abstract

Research has revealed structural and functional differences in the brains of adult instrumental musicians compared to those of matched nonmusician controls, with intensity/duration of instrumental training and practice being important predictors of these differences. Nevertheless, the differential contributions of nature and nurture to these differences are not yet clear. The musician-nonmusician comparison is an ideal model for examining whether and, if so, where such functional and structural brain plasticity occurs, because musicians acquire and continuously practice a variety of complex motor, auditory, and multimodal skills (e.g., translating visually perceived musical symbols into motor commands while simultaneously monitoring instrumental output and receiving multisensory feedback). Research has also demonstrated that music training in children results in long-term enhancement of visual-spatial, verbal, and mathematical performance. However, the underlying neural bases of such enhancements and whether the intensity and duration of instrumental training or other factors, such as extracurricular activities, attention, motivation, or instructional methods can contribute to or predict these enhancements are yet unknown. Here we report the initial results from our studies examining the brain and cognitive effects of instrumental music training on young children in a longitudinal study and a cross-sectional comparison in older children. Further, we present a comparison of the results in these children's studies with observations from our cross-sectional studies with adults.

Broca's Area Supports Enhanced Visuospatial Cognition in Orchestral Musicians

“…Orchestral musicians and controls, matched for handedness, age, and verbal intelligence, demonstrated a neural and behavioral dissociation on verbal and visuospatial tasks in that there were no differences in either behavioral data or Broca's area activation during performance of the verbal task, but there were significant differences, both behaviorally and neurofunctionally, during the visuospatial task performance. Our findings extend the current and growing literature reporting the transferable benefits of music performance training to nonmusical cognitive abilities in children and adolescents (Costa-Giomi, 2004;Schellenberg, 2004Schellenberg, , 2005Schellenberg, , 2006Schlaug et al, 2005). Indeed, these findings have important implications, by providing additional objective evidence to support the suggestion that the development and maintenance of musical performance abilities confers benefit to nonmusical cognitive domains.…”

Effects of musical valence on the cognitive processing of lyrics

“…Numerous other studies have shown similar effects of musical training on brain structure (Bermudez & Zatorre, 2005;Oechslin, Van de Ville, Lazeyras, Hauert, & James, 2013;Schlaug, Jänke, Huang, Staiger, & Steinmetz, 1995;Schlaug, Norton, Overy, & Winner, 2005;Schmithorst & Wilke, 2002), suggesting the possibility that musicians and non-musicians reacted to the stimuli in the current experiment in different ways.…”

White matter plasticity in the corticospinal tract of musicians: A diffusion tensor imaging study

“…Interestingly, structural differences in the primary motor cortex between keyboard and string instrument players have been reported (Schlaug et al, 2005). The majority of the keyboard players had an elaborated configuration of the precentral gyrus on both sides, whereas most of the adult string players had this atypicality only in the right hemisphere.…”