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Ethel Angeli Guillermo

Mr. Donald

Writing for College

9 April 2018

The Helpful Sound: A Look Into the Benefits of Musical Training and Cognitive Development

On an early morning, a young girl wakes up to the sound of her alarm. The bed creaks as

she gets up and walks toward the door. She hears the sounds of the refrigerator opening, plates

colliding with the table, and juice being poured into a glass cup. Outside, the car beeps, followed

by the car door opening and then closing. Cold air blows lightly out of the air conditioner of the

car, and a song plays on the radio. Once at school, the young girl is faced with the sounds of

people talking, footsteps meeting the pavement, keys jangling from a teacher’s lanyard,

backpacks being thrown on a table, car engines moving in and out of the parking lot, and finally,

the school bell. All these sounds help the young girl to be aware of her surroundings, but it is not

until she enters the music classroom that the sounds she hears are important. She picks up her

violin, waits for her teacher to cue the group, and looks at her notation paper as she begins to

play her instrument. Music classes at schools are often looked down upon because they are not

core subjects like mathematics, science, social studies and reading. On the contrary, many

studies have shown that musical training has significant benefits when it comes to brain

structure, especially when the training begins at a young age. The ability for young children to

learn and play a musical instrument can benefit them later in life and can also help with the

progression of their cognitive development. Despite what others may say about music classes,

musical training can enhance neuroplasticity, improve learning, and increase creativity.
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Musical training can enhance neuroplasticity. When babies are born, their brains have

almost all the neurons any person can have. By two years old, their brains are about eighty

percent of the adult size. Research has shown that the brain fully develops around the age of

twenty-five, but the critical period for brain development happens during the first three years of

childhood. In relation to musical training, the Society for Neuroscience held their annual meeting

in 2013 and discovered that extensive musical training affects different regions of the brain in

terms of structure and function, especially when musical training commenced before the age of

seven. The press conference moderator, Gottfried Schlaug, MD, PhD of Harvard Medical

School, stated,

Playing a musical instrument is a multisensory 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. (“Musical Training Shapes Brain Anatomy and

Affects Function”)

Among these new findings were the studies of Yunxin Wang and Julie Roy, neuroscience

researchers at Beijing Normal University in China and University of Montreal in Canada,

respectively. Their research, along with that of many others, demonstrate how musical training

can change and shape brain anatomy, similarly to how experiences of love and comfort as a child

can affect brain development (“Musical Training Shapes Brain Anatomy and Affects Function”).

As mentioned at the 2013 Society of Neuroscience meeting, Yunxin Wang of the Beijing

Normal University of China conducted a study that determined how starting musical training at a

young age could affect brain structure. Wang explained that “early musical training does more

good for kids than just making it easier for them to enjoy music, it changes their brain and these
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brain changes could lead to cognitive advances as well” (“Musical Training Shapes Brain

Anatomy and Affects Function”). The study was conducted around forty-eight Han Chinese

adults whose ages ranged between nineteen and twenty-one years old. Each adult had received at

least one year of formal musical training between three and fifteen years old. Wang and her team

of researchers evaluated the volume of the brain’s gray matter and surface area. They found that

those who started musical training at a younger age had stronger function and language skills. To

further investigate the study, Wang made a comparison between those who started musical

training before and after the age of seven. She found that the participants who started before the

age of seven had a thicker cortex, or outer layer of the brain, in regions that correlate to self-

awareness and auditory processing. Wang took into consideration that the brain does indeed

mature and develop differently among people, but from her study, she emphasized that there is a

stronger impact on brain development when musical training starts at a young age, specifically

before seven years old (“Musical Training Shapes Brain Anatomy and Affects Function”).

As an illustration, a study was conducted to compare the brain structures between

children who had musical training and those who did not. The study involved two groups: the

instrumental and control groups. Both groups consisted of children with a mean age of six years

old, were right-handed, and had similar socioeconomic statuses. The instrumental group

consisted of fifteen children who received weekly private keyboard lessons for thirty minutes for

fifteen months. The control group consisted of sixteen children who did not receive any type of

private musical lesson, but the children did participate in weekly forty-minute music classes at

school that involved singing and playing the drums. To further analyze any results of change in

brain structure, both groups of children were given behavioral tests and went through a magnetic

resonance imaging (MRI) scan before and after the musical training was given. The behavioral
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tests included two musically related tests that determined finger motor and musical listening

skills, and five non-musically related tests that examined vocabulary, hearing, and object

assembly skills. The first round of tests showed that both groups had similar results in terms of

brain structure and behavior. After the duration of fifteen months, results showed that there were

differences between the two groups. Based on the second behavioral tests, the instrumental group

showed more improvement in the finger motor and melodic/rhythmic tests than the control

group. Although, for the non-musically related behavioral tests, results showed that both groups

remained the same. In relation to brain deformation, the second round of MRI scans showed that

the instrumental group showed significant differences compared to the control group. After

fifteen months of private keyboard lessons, “instrumental children showed areas of greater

relative voxel size than those of controls in motor areas, such as the right precentral gyrus (motor

hand area) and the corpus callosum (fourth and fifth segment/midbody)” (Hyde et. al). These

improvements of brain structure in motor and auditory areas over a fifteen-month period of

music lessons prove that brain plasticity can be enhanced due to musical training (Hyde et. al).

Along with starting musical training at a young age, Julie Roy and her team at the

University of Montreal in Canada found that those who had or continue to have musical training

have an increased ability to use sensory information. In her experiment, Roy required fifteen

musicians, who had ten to twenty-five years of musical experience, and fifteen nonmusicians to

perform sensory processing tasks. The participants were asked to describe what they felt on their

finger while hearing sounds. Prior studies proved that this task could be difficult to do because

when the senses of hearing and touch are combined, it may create perceptual illusions (Sparks).

For example, if a person feels one vibration but hears three sounds, he or she may think that they

felt three vibrations. At the end of the study, Roy found that “while musicians and non-musicians
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had identical capabilities to detect and discriminate information based on a single sense, people

with long-term intensive musical training were better able to separate auditory and tactile

information, and not fall prey to illusions when presented with multisensory stimulation”

(“Musical Training Affects Brain Anatomy and Affects Function”). Musicians may be were

more successful in the task than the non-musicians because they have been trained to use many

of their senses simultaneously. Along with learning to play an instrument, musicians must listen

to themselves play, listen to others around them, feel their instrument, read their music notation

paper, and regularly look at a conductor (if there is any), all at once. Because the musicians in

Roy’s study had an extensive amount of musical training, they were able to do the task very well,

whereas the non-musicians found it difficult to distinguish what they felt and heard. These

evidences prove that musical training has the ability to enhance neuroplasticity by improving the

brain regions associated with sensory information (Sparks).

Music training is beneficial because it can improve learning. Three types of learning

styles are auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Most studies show that people are better at visualizing

what they are learning rather than listening to a lecture or doing related physical activities.

Students would have the advantage at better learning new material if they utilize all three

learning styles. Those who have musical ability may find it easier to learn through auditory

processing, which involves associating sound with language. For example, if musicians watch a

movie scene with a soft melody playing in the background, they will associate the music to the

scene and remember more of what happened than nonmusicians who watch the same scene.

Additionally, “music training imposes a high working-memory load. That can be a good thing, in

that it helps [musicians] expand [their] working memory capacity, and thus reduces the impairing

effects on memory of working memory overload” (Klemm). Increasing the working memory
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capacity can expand and improve the way one thinks. On the contrary, just because musicians

may have a better working memory capacity, it does not mean that musicians are smarter than

any other person. This simply means that musicians are more knowledgeable than if they did not

have musical training (Klemm).

To prove that musical training can improve learning, Nina Kraus, a neurobiologist

researcher from Northwestern University, believes that music can improve how the nervous

system processes sounds in an active environment, such as a classroom. Kraus conducted a study

that focuses on how musical training can help children living in impoverished areas that affect

their ability to learn. Her expectations by the end of the study were that the children would have

increased memory and attention spans that would allow for better focus and communication

skills. The study included children in the first or second grade. Half of the participants were

given musical training and were part of the Harmony Project in Los Angeles, an organization

that offered musical training to interested children. The other half of the participants were picked

from the organization’s waiting list and received no musical training. Over the course of two

years, the reading scores of the music students remained the same while the children with no

musical training had a decrease in their reading scores. Along with those results, Kraus found

that the music students’ neural responses were faster and more precise.

To further examine these results, Kraus and her team of researchers extended their study

to test the auditory abilities in teenagers from lower economic backgrounds at three public high

schools in Chicago. Half of the students either joined a band or choir class while the other half

participated in Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (JROTC). The students had similar

reading abilities and IQs before the study began. To test their neural responses, the students were

instructed to listen to two different sounds simultaneously: a repeated syllable and soft
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background music. Kraus and her team recorded the students’ brain waves at the beginning of

the study, after one year, and again after two years. At the end of the study, the group whose

neural responses improved was the music students’ while the neural responses of the JROTC

students remained constant. Additionally, the results of the music students’ brain waves showed

significant improvement not after one year, but two years, which proves that the effects of

musical training takes time. These results are

the strongest evidence to date that public school music education in lower-income

students can lead to better sound processing in the brain when compared with other types

of enrichment education. Even after the lessons stop, the brain reaps benefits, according

to studies on the long-term benefits of music lessons. (“Musical Training Offsets

Academic Achievement Gaps”)

These benefits can help children who start musical training at a young age throughout their high

school and college careers. From this study, Nina Kraus concluded that schools should have

better music programs. By boosting their neural responses to sound through musical training,

children can improve their attention spans, which can then lead to better focus and learning in the

classroom (“Musical Training Offsets Academic Achievement Gaps”).

Similar to the views of Nina Kraus, Edward S. Lisk–an internationally known clinician

and conductor–wanted to prove to parents and school administration that music serves a purpose

in children’s education. Lisk disagrees with the view that music is only for entertainment and is

an extra subject in school. Through music, children are given the opportunity to express their

creativity, and furthermore, “the foundation for comprehension is enhanced significantly through

the fine art of music by developing a child’s critical listening and thinking skills through the

nuance, inflection, and subtleties of rhythmic and lyrical expression” (Lisk). Parents and
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administrators do not realize that music students are doing more than just playing an instrument

or singing songs. In a music student’s mind, there is a combination of visual, auditory, physical,

and intellectual activity going on. Students are reading complex notation and making sure they

are placing their fingers on the right areas of their instrument to play the correct notes (and in the

case of wind instruments, they make sure that they are letting out enough breath to produce

sound). They are also making sure that they are playing in tempo, listening to other people

playing with them, and making decisions whether to play parts of a song loud or soft. Dr. Frank

Wilson, a well-known neurologist, said, “when a musician plays his instrument, he uses

approximately 90% of the brain…[there is] no other activity that uses the brain to this extent”

(Lisk). Along with the extensive use of the brain, music players and listeners experience multiple

expressions from love to sadness and appreciation to peace. To change the view of music classes

as an extra baggage, Lisk urges musical educators to come together and refine the image of

music by incorporating musical literature into music classes as an academic component. The

topics that Lisk wants to introduce in musical literature include: Band/Orchestra/Chorus:

Academic & Why; The Language of Music, Emotion & Expression; The World of Music: Life-

long Learning; and Imagining and Creating Through Musical Sounds. Through Lisk’s efforts,

children will be able to incorporate what they learn in musical literature to other classes as well.

For example, their creative expression in music through improvisations can inspire them to write

more creatively in an English class, and learning a difficult musical piece can lead students to

analyze and solve a tough math question. These findings provide evidence that learning can be

improved through musical training (Lisk).

Along with its neuroplasticity and academic benefits, musical training can increase

creativity. In a formal private music lesson, students are taught how to read notation, play basic
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music scales, and learn popular musical pieces. The level of difficulty for each musical piece

usually increases as the amount of training lengthens. Students are introduced to the

compositions of Mozart, Beethoven, and various other profound composers, and this offers an

essential foundation for students to explore beyond what is written on the music sheet. By

knowing how to read, write, and play music, students create their own musical styles into certain

pieces through a process called improvisation. Jazz music often incorporates improvisations, and

similar to regular musical training, improvisations take practice. Studies have shown that musical

improvisations challenge the student to think ahead, have self-expression, and foster creativity

(Pinho et. al).

A study was done to examine musical improvisation and creativity in one hundred thirty-

one young adults. Thirty-nine of the participants were nonmusicians and the remaining ninety-

two were musicians from various music programs in Jerusalem, such as the Rimon School of

Jazz and Contemporary Music. Half of the musicians were trained in improvisation while the

other half were not. The participants were instructed to complete an Alternate Uses task and a

Subset of Torrance test. In the Alternate Uses task, they were given a list of five common objects

and they had to list as numerous alternative uses for each object in ten minutes. For example, if

the object was a button, an alternative use for it can be art decorations (aside from being used for

clothing). The Subset of Torrance test instructed the participants to draw as many pictures from a

matrix of circles. Both tasks had scoring guidelines to determine how original and flexible the

participants were. As expected, the musicians who trained in improvisation scored higher in

originality and flexibility than the other two groups. Because they spend majority of their time in

music creating new melodies and going beyond what is written on their music sheets, the
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improvising musicians transfer that technique into non-musically related activities (Kleinmintz

et. al).

To further support the relation between music and creativity, Parag Chordia, the director

of the Music Intelligence Lab at Georgia Tech, discovered that music is a key component in the

creative process. As a musician and a mathematician, Chordia wanted to figure out a way to

combine those elements to assist students in creativity because he believes that “creativity is

something that we all have inside of us and what it’s all about is finding out, how do we unlock

that creativity” (O’Brien). A graduate student at Georgia Tech, Avinash Sastry, used his

knowledge of music and computer technology to devise a computer program that provides

musicians more composition ideas. His program analyzes musical compositions that one creates

and then composes even more compositions based on what it was given. In hopes of being used

as an educational tool to spark creativity, Sastry believes that his program will also encourage

people to compose music. Chordia also created an app called LaDiDa that is aimed for people

who think they do not have any musical ability. LaDiDa allows the person to sing into the phone

and then adds auto tune and an instrumental beat to create a catchy tune. Chordia’s goals with the

app is for users to gain interest and confidence to make music because not only will they enjoy

the process, but they will also have an advantage to further enhance their creative thinking

(O’Brien).

Although not everyone can be a musician, the simple act of listening to music is also a

key element of creativity. As seen with Chordia and Sastry, creativity does not only pertain to

artists and musicians. Creative minds are involved in developing new ideas in all areas of study.

Since previous studies have shown that music can improve learning and memory, researchers

from the Netherlands hypothesized that it can also influence creative thinking. They created an
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experiment in which participants had to complete creativity exercises that evaluated divergent or

convergent thinking while being in a silent setting or listening to classical music that either

stimulated happiness, calmness, sadness, or anxiety. At the end of the experiment, results showed

that the participants who listened to happy music while completing the creativity exercises had a

significantly higher score on divergent thinking, indicating that they generated more creative

ideas. These results propose “listening to happy music increases performance on overall

divergent thinking…suggesting that it enhances the cognitive flexibility needed to come up with

innovative solutions – the ability to switch between different concepts and perspectives, rather

than seeing the problem from a rigid point of view” (Suttie). Barbara Fredrickson, a researcher of

the study, further concluded that since happy music often establishes a positive mood, it

reinforces a person’s desire to explore and think creatively. These discoveries of the link

between music and creativity demonstrate that music is beneficial for everyone and is not limited

to musical students (Suttie).

Despite what others may say about music classes, musical training can enhance

neuroplasticity, improve learning, and increase creativity. Instead of discouraging children that

music classes are hard or boring, society should start viewing musical training as a lifelong

benefit that goes beyond the extent of knowing how to play an instrument. Musical training

exercises the brain just as sport training exercises the muscles. Schools should continue to keep

their music programs and invest in them when appropriate. These programs should also be seen

as beneficial as other core school subjects. Teachers for music programs should continue to find

new ways to keep the learning environment fun and constructive. Additionally, parents with

young children should look into music lessons and enroll their children since various studies

have shown musical training to be effective when started as early as five to seven years old.
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Every person is different and musical training may not be fit for everyone, but whether it is

learning, playing or listening to music, music is beneficial for all one way or another.
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