Recent research on how the mind responds while creating music has shed light on the importance of music education to child development.  Below are some excerpts from the PBS science series NOVA, the episode entitled "Musical Minds"  For more info, follow the link below.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/musicminds/

 

OLIVER SACKS: The validity of such a Mozart effect has been disputed, but what is beyond dispute is the effect of intensive early musical training on the young, plastic brain. Takako Fujioka and her colleagues, for instance, examining auditory evoked potentials in the brain, have recorded striking changes in the left hemisphere of children who have had only a single year of violin training, compared to children with no training.

…The implication of all this for early education is clear. Although a teaspoon of Mozart may not make a child a better mathematician, there is little doubt that regular exposure to music, and especially active participation in music, may stimulate development of many different areas of the brain—areas which have to work together to listen to or perform music. For the vast majority of students, music can be every bit as important educationally as reading or writing.

… and you’ll find that even a few minutes of five finger exercises will make functional changes in the brain, so the brain’s response to music in physiological terms is almost immediate although obviously it would take months or whatever to have anatomical changes. But a year of Suzuki training will produce physical changes in the brain, and there have been studies looking at the brains before and after a year of training. And so whatever gifts a  person has or does not’t have, musical training seems to be very important, the more so if it’s early.

… If music can so alter the brain, at least the musical parts of the brain, when people are young, one would wonder the role of music in education, and whether this enlargement and benefit can spread to other parts of the brain, whether it will facilitate reading, memory, concentration, focus, and there’s quite a lot of evidence that this is the case, and therefore strong arguments for including music in education. But I stress this is something beyond the so-called Mozart effect. A little Mozart under the pillow, a teaspoon of Mozart, while it’s very pleasant and it may introduce people to Mozart, in itself, that’s not enough. There needs to be real engagements with music and a lot of it

 

OLIVER SACKS: I have to say my music teacher is trying to get me into some Beethoven, into a Beethoven sonata. I say, "I don't like it very much." And she said, "You have to learn it and then perhaps you will like it more."

ALAN YENTOB: In fact, our brains do constantly change and adapt to new learnings and stimulation. Neuroscientists call this plasticity.

...Twenty or 30 years ago there was a tendency to think of the brain as almost as fixed as it would appear to be anatomically. And we, in fact, now know that the brain is just continually shaping itself, being reshaped. There seems almost no end to the plasticity of the brain.

 

MUSIC INTIGRATES DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE BRAIN

 

OLIVER SACKS: There's no one musical part of the brain, and in fact there are, sort of, a dozen different parts of the brain which respond to pitch, to rhythm, to timbre, to melodic contour. Even this green part, the cerebellum, is very crucial. And, in fact, you find that visual parts of the brain and motor parts of the brain, and also the parts of the brain concerned with anticipation and expectation, because one doesn't listen to music passively, one sort of decodes it as one listens, one sees where it's going, one has expectations.

ALAN YENTOB: Processing music requires the orchestration of many regions in the brain, a neurological feat that science is just beginning to understand. Pitch, volume, timing and so on are each analyzed separately, and then combined together to create a musical experience.

 

LISTENING VS. IMAGINING MUSIC

 

ALAN YENTOB: First, Sacks listens to the music. Then, Hal asks him to try to recreate the melody in his head. So the question is, "Did his brain perform in the same way when he listened and when he imagined?"

Hal, along with neuroscientist Joy Hirsch, reviews the results with Dr. Sacks.

JOY HIRSCH (Columbia University Medical Center): I want you to see how much of this activity is in common. Remember, I pointed out these frontal lobes areas, the middle frontal gyrus?

OLIVER SACKS: The executive one, yeah.

JOY HIRSCH: See? Exactly the same place in both sets. So, in imagining the music, you're engaging exactly those same areas.

ALAN YENTOB: Many brain regions were active in both cases, but when Sacks imagined music, there was one curious difference.

JOY HIRSCH: Notice this additional activity in the frontal lobe. That means the front part of your brain is very engaged in creating the music. The music isn't coming from the auditory cortex. One might imagine that it's coming from your frontal lobe.

Look at this! Isn't that gorgeous?

ALAN YENTOB: It seems that in the brain of Dr. Sacks, his internal iPod, is orchestrated by his frontal lobe, the part of the brain that coordinates higher mental functions and working memory. But could the scan of his brain tell us what song he was imagining?

JOY HIRSCH: It tells us that you're listening to music, perhaps that you're imagining music, but it doesn't tell us anything about the specific music, at least at this point.

OLIVER SACKS: You can't read my thoughts.

JOY HIRSCH: I can't read your thoughts, yet. But we're trying, Oliver. We're trying.