Mu­sic Lessons in Early Life Aid Brain Func­tion

This may be preaching to the converted, so please forward the link to whomever needs convincing!

Please also Google John M. Feierabend who I saw speak and met at the Midwest Clinic Clinic  music event in Chicago in 2011- who is considered one of the leading authorities on music and movement development - who has shown without doubt, that the below holds good!

 

Mu­sic lessons in early life aid brain func­tion
'The Guardian' - 2013-11-12

Ian Sam­ple San Diego

Music lessons in early childhood lead to changes in the brain that could improve its performance far into adulthood, researchers say. Brain scans of young adults revealed that those who had formal music training before the age of seven had thicker brain regions that deal with hearing and self-awareness.

The findings highlight how brain development can be influenced by the age that children start to learn a musical instrument, and how those changes can persist into later life.

“Early musical training does more good for kids than just making it easier for them to enjoy music. It changes the brain and these brain changes could lead to cognitive advances as well,” said Yunxin Wang of Beijing Normal University.

The brain’s cortex plays a leading role in scores of crucial abilities, from thought and language to memory and attention. The region matures rapidly in the early years of life, and its development could be affected more if a person started musical training before it fully matured.

Wang studied 48 Han Chinese aged between 19 and 21 who had received formal music training for at least a year sometime between the ages of three and 15. Each had a magnetic resonance scan to measure the thickness of the cortex and the volume of grey matter in their brains.
After taking gender and the number of years spent having music lessons into account, Wang found that musical training that started before the age of seven appeared to thicken areas of the brain involved in language skills and executive function, which is a person’s ability to plan and carry out tasks.
She presented the results at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

Copyright © 2013 Guardian Media Group