| Music Wires The Brain |
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Research by Canadian scientists shows that music lessons can improve memory and learning ability in young children aged four to six by encouraging different patterns of brain development.
WIRED RIGHT The brain of children as young as four months old, responds to sounds. Dr Takako Fujioka from the Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute suggests that musical training has an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention.
LEARN BETTER Psychologists from the Chinese University of Hong Kong studied 90 boys between the ages of 6 and 15. They found that children who are given musical training either in the form of violin or piano lessons, had better verbal memories than those who did not have lessons. The researchers suggest that music lessons stimulate the left side of the brain, which also controls verbal learning. They say their findings could help people recovering from a brain injury as well as healthy children.
TWIN BENEFITS Music lessons help both the right and left brain areas. Dr Agnes Chan from the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that giving music lessons to children somehow contributes to the re-organisation and better development of the left temporal lobe, which in turn facilitates cognitive processing mediated by that specific brain area, that is, verbal memory. Students with better verbal memory probably will find it easier to learn in school.
MOZART EFFECT Frances Rauscher, a psychologist now at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, discovered that listening to Mozart improved people’s mathematical and spatial reasoning. For example, a Mozart piano sonata seems to stimulate activity in three genes involved in nerve-cell signalling in the brain.
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