Page 16 - Info Magazine nr 17 april may 2021

NEWS FROM SCIENCE ABOUT MUSIC AND BRAINS

Scientific Study Shows a Link Between Musical Training and Successful Children

Research from 2015:
Professor Harold Hill from The Music Man may have been onto something with his “Think System”
after all! A new study by the University of Vermont College of Medicine shows a scientific link
between playing an instrument and brain development.

Researchers studied the brain development of 232 children between the ages of 6 to 18, who
played a musical instrument. "What we found was the more a child trained on an instrument," said
James Hudziak, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont and director of the Vermont
Center for Children, Youth and Families, "it accelerated cortical or-
ganization in attention skill, anxiety management and emotional
control."

The authors of the study discovered results that were music to their
ears—playing music altered the behavior-regulating areas of the
brain. For instance, practicing music changed the thickness in the
part of the cortex that pertains to "executive functioning, including
working memory, attentional control, as well as organization and
planning for the future," wrote the studies author’s.
Hudziak hopes his findings will help convince people to use positive
things, such as music, as a treatment for psychological disorders such as ADHD. A disturbing
fact from the U.S. Department of Education reveals, “three-quarters of U.S. high school students
‘Rarely or never’ take extracurricular lessons in music or the arts.”

It’s never too late for you or your child to get involved with music on some level.

Study shows strong links between music and math, reading achievement

Date:
November 30, 2020
Source:
University of Kansas
Summary:
A music educator thought that if he could just control his study for the myriad factors that might
have influenced previous ones - race, income, education, etc. -- he could disprove the notion of
a link between students' musical and mathematical achievement. Nope. His new study showed
statistically significant associations between the two at both the individual and the school-dis-
trict levels.
Students who listened to Beethoven during lecture -- and in dreamland --

did better on test

Date:
April 7, 2020
Source:
Baylor University
Summary:
College students who listened to classical music by Beethoven and Chopin during a compu-
ter-interactive lecture on microeconomics -- and heard the music played again that night -- did
better on a test the next day than did peers who heard the same lecture, but instead slept that
evening with white noise in the background.