How Music Can Change Your Brain

How Music Changes Your Brain - by  Melissa Locker

There's little doubt that learning to play a musical instrument is great for developing brains.

Science has shown that when children learn to play music, their brains begin to hear and process sounds that they couldn't otherwise hear. This helps them develop "neurophysiological distinction" between certain sounds that can aid in literacy, which can translate into improved academic results for kids.

Many parents probably read the above sentence and started mentally Google-ing child music classes in their local area. But if your kid doesn't like learning an instrument or doesn't actively engage in the class--opting to stare at the wall or doodle in a notebook instead of participating--he or she may not be getting all the benefits of those classes anyway.

A new study from Northwestern University revealed that in order to fully reap the cognitive benefits of a music class, kids can't just sit there and let the sound of music wash over them. They have to be actively engaged in the music and participate in the class. "Even in a group of highly motivated students, small variations in music engagement — attendance and class participation — predicted the strength of neural processing after music training," said Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, in an email to TIME. She co-authored the study with Jane Hornickel, Dana L. Strait, Jessica Slater and Elaine Thompson of Northwestern University.

Additionally, the study showed that students who played instruments in class had more improved neural processing than the children who attended the music appreciation group. "We like to say that 'making music matters,'" said Kraus. "Because it is only through the active generation and manipulation of sound that music can rewire the brain."

Kraus, whose research appeared today in Frontiers in Psychology, continued: "Our results support the importance of active experience and meaningful engagement with sound to stimulate changes in the brain." Active participation and meaningful engagement translate into children being highly involved in their musical training--these are the kids who had good attendance, who paid close attention in class, "and were the most on-task during their lesson," said Kraus.

To find these results, Kraus's team went straight to the source, hooking up strategically placed electrode wires on the students' heads to capture the brain's responses.

Kraus's team at Northwestern has teamed up with The Harmony Project, a community music program serving low-income children in Los Angeles, after Harmony's founder approached Kraus to provide scientific evidence behind the program's success with students.

According to The Harmony Project's website, since 2008, 93 percent of Harmony Project seniors have gone on to college, despite a dropout rate of 50 percent or more in their neighborhoods. It's a pretty impressive achievement and the Northwestern team designed a study to explore those striking numbers. That research, published in September in the Journal of Neuroscience, showed direct evidence that music training has a biological effect on children's developing nervous systems.

As a follow up, the team decided to test whether the level of engagement in that music training actually matters. Turns out, it really does. Researchers found that after two years, children who not only regularly attended music classes, but also actively participated in the class, showed larger improvements in how the brain processes speech and reading scores than their less-involved peers.

"It turns out that playing a musical instrument is important," Kraus said, differentiating her group's findings from the now- debunked myth that just listening to certain types of music improves intelligence, the so-called "Mozart effect." "We don't see these kinds of biological changes in people who are just listening to music, who are not playing an instrument," said Kraus. "I like to give the analogy that you're not going to become physically fit just by watching sports." It's important to engage with the sound in order to reap the benefits and see changes in the central nervous system.

As to how to keep children interested in playing instruments, that's up to the parents. "I think parents should follow their intuitions with respect to keeping their children engaged," said Kraus. "Find the kind of music they love, good teachers, an instrument they'll like. Making music should be something that children enjoy and will want to keep doing for many years!"

With that in mind, it's not too late to trade in those Minecraft Legos, Frozen paraphernalia, XBox games, and GoldieBlox presents that you may have purchased, and swap them out for music lessons for the kids in your life.

Original Article Here

This Is Your Brain. This Is Your Brain On Music!

Musical training doesn't just improve your ear for music — it helps your ear for speech. That's the takeaway from an unusual new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers found that kids who took music lessons for two years didn't just get better at playing the trombone or violin; they found that playing music also helped kids' brains process language.
Something else unusual about the study: where it took place. It wasn't a laboratory, but in the offices of Harmony Project in Los Angeles. It's a nonprofit after-school program that teaches music to children in low-income communities.
Two nights a week, neuroscience and musical learning meet at Harmony's Hollywood headquarters, where some two-dozen children gather to learn how to play flutes, oboes, trombones and trumpets. The program also includes on-site instruction at many public schools across Los Angeles County.
Harmony Project is the brainchild of Margaret Martin, whose life path includes parenting two kids while homeless before earning a doctorate in public health. A few years ago, she noticed something remarkable about the kids who had gone through her program.

"Since 2008, 93 percent of our high school seniors have graduated in four years and have gone on to colleges like Dartmouth, Tulane, NYU," Martin says, "despite dropout rates of 50 percent or more in the neighborhoods where they live and where we intentionally site our programs."

There are plenty of possible explanations for that success. Some of the kids and parents the program attracts are clearly driven. Then there's access to instruments the kids couldn't otherwise afford, and the lessons, of course. Perhaps more importantly, Harmony Project gives kids a place to go after the bell rings, and access to adults who will challenge and nurture them. Keep in mind, many of these students come from families or neighborhoods that have been ravaged by substance abuse or violence — or both.
Still, Martin suspected there was something else, too — something about actually playing music — that was helping these kids.
Enter neurobiologist Nina Kraus, who runs the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University. When a mutual acquaintance at the National Institutes of Health introduced her to Martin, Kraus jumped at the chance to explore Martin's hunch and to study the Harmony Project kids and their brains.

Breaking Down Brainwaves
Before we get to what, exactly, Kraus' team did or how they did it, here's a quick primer on how the brain works:

The brain depends on neurons. Whenever we take in new information — through our ears, eyes or skin — those neurons talk to each other by firing off electrical pulses. We call these brainwaves. With scalp electrodes, Kraus and her team can both see and hear these brainwaves.
Using some relatively new, expensive and complicated technology, Kraus can also break these brainwaves down into their component parts — to better understand how kids process not only music but speech, too. That's because the two aren't that different. They have three common denominators — pitch, timing and timbre — and the brain uses the same circuitry to make sense of them all.
In other research, Kraus had noticed something about the brains of kids who come from poverty, like many in the Harmony Project. These children often hear fewer words by age 5 than other kids do.
And that's a problem, Kraus says, because "in the absence of stimulation, the nervous system ... hungry for stimulation ... will make things up. So, in the absence of sound, what we saw is that there was just more random background activity, which you might think of as static."
In addition to that "neural noise," as Kraus calls it, ability to process sound — like telling the difference between someone saying "ba" and "ga" — requires microsecond precision in the brain. And many kids raised in poverty, Kraus says, simply have a harder time doing it; individual sounds can seem "blurry" to the brain. (To hear an analogy of this, using an iconic Mister Rogers monologue — giving you some sense of what the brain of a child raised in poverty might hear — be sure to listen to the audio version of this story.)

Working with Harmony Project, Kraus randomly assigned several dozen kids from the program's waitlist into two groups: those who would be studied after one year of music lessons and those who would be studied after two years.
And what she found was that in the two-year kids, the static didn't go away. But their brains got better — more precise — at processing sound. In short: less blur.

Why The Improvement?
It goes back to pitch, timing and timbre. Kraus argues that learning music improves the brain's ability to process all three, which helps kids pick up language, too. Consonants and vowels become clearer, and the brain can make sense of them more quickly.
That's also likely to make life easier at school, not just in music class but in math class, too — and everywhere else.
To be clear, the study has its limits. It was small — roughly 50 kids, ranging in age from 6 to 9. It wasn't conducted in a lab. And it's hard to know if kids doing some other activity could have experienced similar benefits.
But 10th-grader Monica Miranda doesn't need proof that playing violin has helped her. She's one of the first students in the door at a recent Harmony Project re-enrollment event in the auditorium of a nearby elementary school.
"I feel like music really connects with education," she says. "It helps you concentrate more."
Miranda is in her third year with Harmony Project.
"When I do my homework or I'm studying for something and I feel overwhelmed, I usually go to my violin, to start playing it," Miranda says. "I feel like it relaxes my mind. And coming here to play with an orchestra, it's just amazing. I love it."
And, the science says, her brain loves it, too.

Original Article at NPR

Music Teaches Children Skills in Childcare

Music and Thinking Skills
Music is a tool that helps children learn new thinking skills. When children play with musical instruments, they explore cause and effect. They can see that pressing a key makes a sound. Additionally, they learn to pay attention to changes in sound, noting for example that certain keys sound deeper than others. Exploring musical instruments also helps children learn how different instruments work and the sounds they create. Inviting guest musicians to the child care program is an effective way of introducing children to unfamiliar musical instruments.

Music and Language
Singing songs is a powerful way for young children to practice language. When children sing, they practice pronouncing words and putting together sentences. Learning the lyrics to songs is also an effective way to remember information. How many people first learned the alphabet by singing the ABC song? Our brains remember language better when it is set to music. 

Music and Motor Skills
Songs with motions help children practice fine-motor coordination. Doing the finger motions of a song like "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" or a finger play like "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" helps children practice their hand and finger control -- a skill necessary for writing and handling small objects. Dancing to music also helps children perfect their control of their arms and legs. Music and dance are fun and help children be playful with each other and with their child care providers. 

Music and Emotions
Listening to music can help children learn about emotions. Music can also be soothing and comforting. Remember how babies love lullabies. Child care providers might play classical music and help the children label the sounds as scary, sad or happy. Children can also connect music with emotions by drawing or painting a picture of their feelings as they listen to a certain musical selection.

Music and Routines 
Music and singing can help children follow the routine of the child care program. Clean-up songs alert children that it's time to put away their toys and move to another activity. Child care providers can use songs to signal a transition from one activity to another, or to keep children interested and occupied while they are waiting for the next activity. Playing quiet music is a clear signal for nap time. Loud, energetic music can get children up and moving or help them use up energy before they settle down to a quieter task. Music is not just an "extra" in child care. Listening to music, singing songs and playing instruments provide learning opportunities and make both children and child care providers feel good. Look for creative ways to include music in child care programs for children of all ages.

Original Article Here

Optimize Your Brain with Music

Neuroscientists are discovering multiple ways that musical training improves the function and connectivity of different brain regions. Musical training increases brain volume and strengthens communication between brain areas. Playing an instrument changes how the brain interprets and integrates a wide range of sensory information, especially for those who start before age 7. These findings were presented at the Neuroscience 2013 conference in San Diego.

In a press briefing on November 11, 2013 Gottfried Schlaug, MD, PhD—who is an expert on music, neuroimaging and brain plasticity from Harvard Medical School—summarized the new research from three different presentations at the conference. These insights suggest potential new roles for musical training including fostering plasticity in the brain; have strong implications for using musical training as a tool in education; and for treating a range of learning disabilities.

Playing a musical instrument can cause fundamental changes in a young person's brain, shaping both how it functions and how it is physically structured, researchers say. "Listening to and making music is not only an auditory experience, but it is a multisensory and motor experience. Making music over a long period of time can change brain function and brain structure," Schlaug said. 

Three Brain Benefits of Musical Training:

1. Musicians have an enhanced ability to integrate sensory information from hearing, touch, and sight.
2. The age at which musical training begins affects brain anatomy as an adult; beginning training before the age of seven has the greatest impact.
3. Brain circuits involved in musical improvisation are shaped by systematic training, leading to less reliance on working memory and more extensive connectivity within the brain.

"Music might provide an alternative access into a broken or dysfunctional system within the brain," said Schlaug. Adding, "Music has the unique ability to go through alternative channels and connect different sections of the brain."

Three New Studies on the Brain Benefits of Musical Training

The first study, conducted by researchers at the University of Montreal, asked trained musicians and non-musicians to respond to sound and touch sensations at the same time. Two sounds were delivered at the same time a person received one touch sensation, which was intended to create the perceptual illusion that the person actually had received two touch sensations. 

Since musicians have to simultaneously work their instrument, read sheet music and listen to the tones they produce, the researchers predicted that they would be better at differentiating sound from touch. Their hypothesis was correct. Non-musicians fell for the perceptual illusion, but musicians did not, according to researcher Julie Roy from the University of Montreal. "Musicians are able to ignore the auditory stimuli and only report what they are feeling," Roy said, adding "that this is solid evidence of an improved ability to process information from more than one sense at the same time."

The second study involved brain scans of 48 adults aged between 19 and 21, who had at least a year of musical training while growing up. The researchers discovered that brain regions related to hearing and self-awareness appeared to be larger in people who began taking music lessons before age 7.

These findings seem to indicate that musical training can have a huge impact on the developing brain, since brain maturation tends to peak around age 7, said lead researcher Yunxin Wang, of the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning at Beijing Normal University. Specifically, these areas tended to have more gray matter leading to a thicker cortex, which is the outer layer of the cerebrum.

The third study found that brain circuitry can be reshaped by musical training through neuroplasticity. For the study, Swedish researchers analysed brain function of 39 pianists who were asked to play a special 12-key piano keyboard while having their brain scanned in an MRI. Ana Pinho, the lead author of the study from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, reported that systematic training actually helped improve brain areas related to music improvisation. The ability to improvise improved brain connectivity resulting in less dependence on working memory.  

“Pianists who were more experienced in jazz improvisation showed higher connectivity between three major regions of the brain's frontal lobe while they improvised some music,” said Pinho. “At the same time, they showed less activity in brain regions associated with executive functions such as planning and organizing, which could mean that trained improvisers are able to generate music with little conscious attention or thought,” Pinho said.

Playing an Instrument Before Age 7 Benefits Brain Architecture for a Lifespan

The findings presented at the conference are backed by multiple previous studies. In particular, a January 2013 study titled “Early Musical Training and White-Matter Plasticity in the Corpus Callosum: Evidence for a Sensitive Period” published in the Journal of Neuroscience earlier this year reported that musical training before age 7 helped brain development. Children who started taking music lessons early had better connections across the corpus callosum which connects the left and right hemispheres of the cerebrum.

A variety of studies have suggested that early training might be related to greater amounts of white matter in the corpus callosum. This study compared white-matter organization using diffusion tensor imaging in early- and late-trained musicians matched for years of training and experience.

The researchers found that early-trained musicians had greater connectivity across the corpus callosum. Musical training and practice at a young age improved due to the sensorimotor synchronization required to play an instrument. They concluded that training before the age of 7 years results in changes in white-matter connectivity that may serve as a solid scaffolding upon which ongoing experience can maintain a well-connected brain infrastructure into adulthood.

My 6-year-old daughter is lucky to take bi-weekly piano and violin lessons. In addition to practicing a musical instrument, my daughter's daily activities include a broad range of athletics that bulk up the gray matter of both hemispheres of her cerebellum and improve motor skills. Schoolwork and making art increases brain volume and connectivity between both hemispheres of her cerebrum. This combination of activities strengthens the connectivity between all four hemispheres of her developing brain which optimizes brain function.

Some of the brain changes that occur with extensive musical training are reflected in improved automation of task—much as one would recite a multiplication table—and the acquisition of highly specific sensorimotor and cognitive skills required for various aspects of musical expertise.

Conclusion: Musical Training Increases Brain Volume and Connectivity

"Playing a musical instrument is a multi-sensory and motor experience that creates emotions and motions—from finger tapping to dancing—and engages pleasure and reward systems in the brain. It has the potential to change brain function and structure when done over a long period of time," according to Gottfried Schlaug. "As today's findings show, intense musical training generates new processes within the brain, at different stages of life, and with a range of impacts on creativity, cognition, and learning," he concludes. 

"All these findings ultimately could lead to improved therapies for people with brain injuries or learning disabilities," Schlaug said. Adding, "Music might provide an alternative access into a broken or dysfunctional system within the brain. Music has the unique ability to go through alternative channels and connect different sections of the brain."

Original Article Here