Benefits of playing music—for adults and kids
We’ve all heard there are many reasons people should learn to play music. Many say it helps with creativity, math, concentration and the list goes on. But are these just myths?
Early this year, a new study released from Northwestern University proved that the lifelong playing of musical instruments has a positive impact on the brain. The study was published in the Chicago Tribune, and essentially shows that playing an instrument helps tune the brain.
"A musician has to be constantly picking out sounds from others. Just as we lift weights to build our biceps, playing music makes our nervous systems more efficient,” says Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern and principal investigator of its Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory.
The study included 87 participants — younger (18 to 32) and older (45 to 65), musicians and nonmusicians. The musicians were not all professional, but they played their instruments at least three times a week into adulthood.
And what about the effects for kids? The same researchers found that just one to five years of experience playing music as a child was associated with an improved cognitive ability in processing complex sounds as a young adult. (source: Smithsonianmag.com)
“We help address a question on every parent’s mind: ‘Will my child benefit if she plays music for a short while but then quits training?’” says Nina Kraus, the study’s co-author. “Based on what we already know about the ways that music helps shape the brain, the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning.
The study split participants up into three groups—those with no musical instruction, those with one to five years of instruction and those with six to 11 years of instruction. The results were striking. Musicians with more than six years experience showed the greatest mental response to the tones, but those with one to five years still did better than those with none.
The researchers say that this mental response indicates the ability to pull out the lowest frequency in a complex sound, and their previous work has shown this ability is crucial for both speech and music perception, especially in noisy environments. Thus, playing music for just a few years as a child seems to be linked with better listening skills much later on.
So play on, and benefit for life.
Links:
Source link: Chicago Tribune
(link to: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-28/news/ct-x-music-training-study-20120328_1_musical-instruments-musical-training-musical-education
Source: Smithsonianmag.com
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