NZ Suzuki Journal Summer 1999 – Music: Hard-wiring the Brain
Teaching the music of Mozart or Beethoven to children as young as three can improve their academic performance, new research has revealed. Scientists have proven that children who practice for as little as ten minutes a day on the piano score dramatically higher results in intelligence tests.
The researchers have shown that playing music at this age, when brain connections are formed more easily, produces a long-term improvement in how a child reasons and thinks. They believe that regular practice modifies the “hard-wiring” in parts of the upper brain thought to be responsible for creative and intellectual ability.
Gordon Shaw, professor of physics at the University of California, who carried out the study, said the implications of this work were important to both parents and teachers.
“We have shown that in some way, training children in music at three or four is improving the way in which their brains recognize patterns in space and time,” he said. “We believe there is a common neural language that comes from some underlying structure in our brains. It is not only seeing patterns but sequences of patterns.”
“Little children are exposed to stimuli and they respond to them, but the idea of being able to think ahead and form mental images and process the images in their heads is something they do not do. Certain types of musical learning seem to promote this.”
The children who took part in the study learned simple melodies by Beethoven and Mozart, who started composing at the age of five. “We taught them Mozart because somehow we feel the magical genius of Mozart taps into this inherent structure in the brain,” Shaw said. “The music flowed from him. He was a natural composer who didn’t have to struggle over each note.”
Shaw first tested the abilities of 78 children aged three and four by recording the speed and accuracy with which they put together a four-part jigsaw. The children were then divided into three groups. One group was given piano lessons, the second had computer lessons, and the third group received no training at all. After nine months, the children’s abilities were tested again. The children who had taken piano lessons showed a dramatic improvement. Their scores leapt 35%, compared to little or no improvement in the other two groups.
Although the benefits of teaching music to children have long since been suggested, this was the first evidence that music training actually improves intellectual ability.
In another study done at Wells Cathedral School, Somerset, England, teachers have noted that musicians show better exam results than other pupils.
“In general, our musicians achieve a grade higher at A-level (6th form) than those who are not studying it,” said Roger Durston, Director of Music. “I think it is true that early music learning develops cross-laterality between the hemispheres of the brain and has a profound effect in enhancing cerebral activity.”
Some educational psychologists dispute the conclusions of Shaw’s research. “There is no accepted proof that music training is hard-wiring the brain,” said Dr. Susan O’Neill, a psychologist from Keele University. “I think it is much more likely that the increased motivation and confidence from being able to play an instrument is the reason for their improved performances.”
David Bedford, associate composer with the English Sinfonia, wrote his first overture at the age of five. “I would love to believe the hypothesis,” he said. “It would boost music as a skill and stop teachers thinking of it as a second-class subject.”
Taken from an article by Lherry Norton, UK Sunday Times.