Music Lessons Before Age 7 Boosts Brain Link

At Capstone Music, we’ve always supported the notion that starting children in music early is a great way to aid in their learning and development, which extends to other activities. There h ave been countless studies pointing out the positive cognitive benefits learning music makes in kids. A recent article published by CBC news (credit below) says learning instruments like piano “boosts brain links”.

Montreal based researchers at Concordia and McGill Universities saw a relationship between improved motor skill function among children who took music lessons, and in particular those who started taking music lessons before the age of 7.

“Those who started their musical training at a younger age performed better than those who started their musical training later, who in turn performed better than the non-musicians on a test that involved clicking a mouse in response to a series of dashes on a screen that look similar to Morse code.”

“It’s really looking at your ability to put together visual and motor response and to be really accurate in terms of your timing,” researchers said  and noted that the skills are used in music, but the task itself is not musical. They add, “These people didn’t spend their lives practising this task …. We’re not just showing that they’re better at something they did all the time.”

The articles says that under MRI testing, “researchers found that non-musicians with more connections between the left and right motor regions of the brain tended to perform better on the test. The connections show up on the scan as extra tissue called white matter in a bundle of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum, which plays a big role in co-ordinating a person’s two hands — an important component of playing a musical instrument.”

If there was ever a time to get your toddlers into learning music, it seems the best time for maximum benefit is now. Drop by our Burlington Music Studio…check out our facilities and meet some of our music teachers…you’re kids will thank you for it – for a lifetime!

Credit: Emily Chung, CBC News Posted: Feb 13, 2013; http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/02/13/science-early-musical-training-brain.html