The musical brain begins functioning in the womb during the last three months of development and continues for a lifetime, making the case for lifelong musical stimulation and learning. Sound is one of the major sources of brain stimuli that maintains mental vitality. The nucleus basalis is the part of the brain that gives affective meaning to auditory input and codes it in our memory. Music plays a significant role in the development of memory storage and emotional intelligence.
Don Campbell, in Introduction to the Musical Brain, claimed that music stimulation increased intelligence. His book, The Mozart Effect, made the topic of music’s impact on human development popular with the public. In journals and popular magazines, we often read that music experience improves reading and math skills and even raises SAT scores. Other researchers warn that these effects are correlated but not necessarily causal. Ralph Spingte, respected researcher in the field of music medicine, finds the “music makes you smarter” statements to be dangerous and misleading exaggerations, doing more harm than good to his field.
In The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle warns: ..studies show that baby-brain DVDs don’t make children smarter. In fact, they make them less smart. ….Baby-brain DVDs don’t work because they don’t create deep practice—in fact, they actively prevent it, by taking up time that could be used for firing circuits.4 Music DVDs for young children are no substitute for deep practice and active music experience.
Eric Jensen warns that the arts are not a quick fix for struggling students and low test scores. Arts experiences change the brain slowly over time and offer benefits for a lifetime. They are valuable for the overall development of a young person and should not be dismissed when current academic performance does not significantly improve. We must look at the bigger picture, realizing how music experiences can change neural connections and reorganize the brain.
Idiot savants have superior abilities and memory recall in one specific field. These skills do not transfer to other life areas. Idiot savants with expert musical or mathematical abilities fascinate us. Researchers speculate if these abilities result from unusual neuron connections in only one specific site in the brain cemented by intense constant practice. Musical idiot savants are a rarity. For most students with special needs, music making does not come easily but they can make progress through daily concentrated practice.
In summary –
Music education, specifically learning to play an instrument such as the piano, is effective because:
---Making music is the ideal neural networking experience, simultaneously connecting multiple brain sites.
---Music education is a cross-brain experience, integrating all our neurodevelopmental systems, reinforcing our strengths and improving our weaknesses. Learning to play an instrument improves fine motor skills, rhythmic awareness, eye-hand coordination, auditory skills, visual skills, the ability to translate symbols, and spatial awareness. Mastery of these skills are keys to educational success.
---Learning a complex skill requiring hours of repeated practice establishes neural pathways in a child’s brain while it is still myelinating. The white matter in the brain, enabling neuron connections, is more developed in musicians than non-musicians.
---Whether students are young or old, they can continue to develop and rebuild myelin through deep practice.
---Music making causes the brain to release chemicals which regulate mood, reduce pain, and enhance body coordination.
---Engaging in the music making process impacts the development of the brain in childhood over a long period of time. While exposure to music is valuable and important in arts education, listening to serious music is not a quick fix for improving academic skills and test scores.
---Students with special needs who are passionate about making music and committed to concentrated daily practice will make musical progress. Passion and practice are better predictors of musical success than natural ability or intelligence.
But myelin doesn’t care about who you are. It only cares about what you do.
Daniel Coyle
Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus 10,000 times is skill.
Shinichi Suzuki
The story of your brain on music is the story of an exquisite orchestration of brain regions, involving both the oldest and newest parts of the human brain, and regions as far apart as the cerebellum in the back of the head and the frontal lobes just behind your eyes. It involves a precision choreography of neurochemical release and uptake between logical prediction systems and emotional reward systems. When we love a piece of music, it reminds us of other music we have heard, and it activates memory traces of emotional times in our lives. Your brain on music is all about…..connections.
Daniel Levitin
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