How Playing Music Affects the Developing Brain
Posted Sunday July 27 2014 at 1:34 pm.
Used tags: music
This is a guest blog post by Bryce Becker and Jenny Zuk of Boston Children's Hospital, Division of Developmental Medicine, Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Gaab Laboratory.
VSA has long advocated for inclusion of the arts and arts for inclusion and, while it's been an ongoing national struggle to maintain arts programing in schools, there is actually research going on right here in Boston to look at the impacts of music education on kids and their developing brains.
In the Gaab Laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital, we investigate how music affects the brain through cognitive neuroscience research. Through our research, we aim to support music programs by providing scientific evidence of how musical training relates to brain development, language abilities and academic achievement. One of the ways in which we work to support music education through our research is by utilizing an imaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Specifically, we measure brain activity in children with musical training as compared to children with no previous musical training in order to identify whether brain differences may be found.
Our lab was recently featured in an installment of WBUR 90.9 FM's Brain Matters series. This piece advocates strongly for the significance of music education programs in the schools and highlights the latest research on music and the brain being conducted in the Boston area. Newly released findings from our lab that are highlighted in the story reveal that children and adults with musical training show better executive function skills than those with no musical training. Our results suggest that musical training may directly train executive function skills (like problem solving and task-switching), which then support academic success. We believe this work holds important implications for the significance of music education in our schools and how research can support the future of such programs.
Check out the story (including full audio and transcript) for more about this and other compelling research.
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