Recently released results of a study on the effect of music lessons on the cognitive abilities of disadvantaged children add more data to the ever growing body of evidence that music has a powerful and positive impact on the human brain, especially in children.
Researchers from the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern spent two summers with children in Los Angeles who were receiving music lessons through Harmony Project, a non-profit organization providing free music education to low-income students. In order to document how music education changed children’s brains, students were hooked up to a neural probe that allowed researchers to see how children “distinguished similar speech sounds, a neural process that is linked to language and reading skills,” according to a press release.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.soc.northwestern.edu/...
After two years of music lessons students at the Harmony Project were performing at a much higher level than other students in the same area.
Since 2008, over 90 percent of high school seniors who participated in Harmony Project’s free music lessons went on to college, even though the high school dropout rates in the surrounding Los Angeles areas can reach up to 50 percent, according to a Northwestern press release.
For musicians, music educators, neuroscientists and pretty much anyone paying attention to the existing and emerging research on music and the brain, this comes as no surprise. What is a surprise is that with such a wealth of scholarly data on the value added by music to the academic achievement of children, it is still the first subject to be cut from most any public school curriculum.
Follow below the perasquiggle for more cool brain music stuff.
The Achievement Gap
The “achievement gap” is the disparity in academic performance and "shows up in grades, standardized-test scores, course selection, dropout rates, and college-completion rates, among other success measures." It most often describes the difference between blacks, Hispanics and low income students to those primarily white students from higher income areas. http://www.edweek.org/...
Clearly socioeconomic factors contribute to these disparities. According to 2009 data from the Census Bureau, of all families with children under 18, 15.5 million live in poverty. This includes non-Hispanic white children, 4.9 million, black children, 4 million and Hispanic children at 5.6 million (Annie E. Casey Foundation 2011). Children in poverty have smaller vocabularies and lower language skills than children from middle-income families.
Dropout rates for these children also tend to be higher.
A recent study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that children who both live in poverty and read below grade level by 3rd grade are three times as likely to not graduate from high school as students who have never been poor (Hernandez, 2011).
http://www.edweek.org/...
The Doctrine of Ethos--and Beyond
The benefits of music on the mind and body have been recognized since the early Greek philosophers. According to Plato, music “gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything.”
The ancient Greek Doctrine of Ethos asserted that music had a power over the character and emotion of man. "Specific scales were said to be able to inspire rage or sadness. Some were said to inspire happiness, and one was even said to weaken the mind due to its simplicity." http://www.studymode.com/...
In his Republic Plato wrote of the power of certain modes or harmonies to affect states of calmness or violence in men.
The Ionian, he replied, and some of the Lydian which are termed “relaxed”.
Well, and are these of any use for warlike men?
Quite the reverse, he replied; and if so the Dorian and the Phrygian are the only ones which you have left.
He spoke about the responsibility of the musician to play the appropriate modes, harmonies and rhythms for the variety of purposes so as to elicit the proper affects among the audience.
Then, I said, we must take Damon into our counsels; and he will tell us what rhythms are expressive of meanness, or insolence, or fury, or other unworthiness, and are to be reserved for the expression of opposite feelings.
And of course this responsibility should be realized through musical training.
. . . musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful . . .
Baroque musicians like J.S. Bach composed according to the Doctrine of Affects which also recognized the power music had on human emotion and behavior. This doctrine was an attempt by late Renaissance and Baroque theorists to "restore what they perceived to be the pure word-to-music relationships advocated by classical Greek philosophers such as Plato."
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/...
A Wealth of Data
In his 1993 book Music and the Mind, British psychiatrist, Anthony Storr (1920-2001), explored the connection between song and language, and how pre-literate civilizations passed on their histories through stanza storytelling recited in a song-like manner with rhythm and rhyme to make the content more memorable and therefore more likely to be transferred intact from generation to generation. To the ancient Greeks music and poetry were one, with a single word mousike used to describe both artistic domains. The Odyssey "was first an art work meant to be sung and heard." (Music in Words, Musical Form and Counter Point in the Twentieth Century Novel, Alan Shockley, Ashgate Publishing, 2009). In non-literate African villages one of the most important people was the griot, a poet, historian, musician and storyteller.
The symbiotic relationship between music and language is no coincidence. Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have found evidence that the processing of music and language do indeed depend on some of the same brain systems.
One brain system, based in the temporal lobes, helps humans memorize information in both language and music— for example, words and meanings in language and familiar melodies in music. The other system, based in the frontal lobes, helps us unconsciously learn and use the rules that underlie both language and music, such as the rules of syntax in sentences, and the rules of harmony in music.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/...
Storr also concluded that music uniquely was processed on both sides of the brain and that there is also a strong correlation between math and music. Current research supports Storr's conclusion.
In her 2006 article published in the Educational Psychologist, she [Dr. Frances Rauscher] explains that “young children provided with instrumental instruction score significantly higher on tasks measuring spatial-temporal cognition, hand-eye coordination and arithmetic.” Part of this is due to the amount of overlap between music skills and math skills.
http://www.vancouversun.com/...
A recent study found that musicians might have brains that function better than their peers even in old age (Hanna-Pladdy, Brenda; MacKay, Alicia, Neuropsychology, Vol 25(3), May 2011, 378-386). They tested senior citizens and discovered that older musicians performed better at a number of tests. Perhaps the most striking finding was the musicians’ IQ scores were higher overall than those who spent their lives listening to music rather than performing it, and the younger the musicians had begun their training the higher their scores.
A couple key points here are that it is active music making and not passive listening that had long term benefits and that the younger they started the better.
In 1997 a study involving three groups of preschoolers was conducted to determine the effect of music versus computer training on early childhood development. One group received private piano/keyboard training and singing lessons. A second group received computer training, and a third/control group did not receive any special training. The group that received the piano/keyboard training scored 34% higher on tests measuring spatial-temporal ability than either of the other two groups. These results suggest that music enhances certain higher brain functions, particularly abstract reasoning skills, required in math and science.
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/...
The Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory findings clearly show that regular music making strengthens non-musical brain functions like distinguishing speech in noise, reading, language, memory, vocal emotion and attention and that musicians' stronger speech-sound processing is reflected in more precise neural responses. This study also makes the strong correlation of sustained musical training to improved cognitive abilities and therefore better academic outcomes for children at risk.
Music, and the other visual and performing arts for that matter, are traditionally considered non-academic subjects and so are particularly vulnerable to the budgetary axe. The evidence is clear. It is time to get music back into our schools. Instead of being considered “extracurricular” music should be designated as “trans-curricular.” The benefits of integrating music training into the elementary curriculum will produce more intelligent, confident and emotionally stable children, who will have decidedly better odds of graduating from high school, attending college and escaping the cycle of poverty.
***********************
For about 10 years I was regional director for a company that provided after-school programs in music, art and acting to elementary schools in the greater Los Angeles Area. Theses classes were "parent funded" and significantly less expensive than private lessons, but even so we generally served schools in middle to upper class districts. In an effort to reach out to schools in depressed economic areas we applied for and received several small grants from Target Stores. While this was helpful and did allow us to provide some classes for children at risk, the money would typically only be enough to fund one semester and Target would not award money to the same school twice in a row. This admittedly was because they wanted to spread their philanthropic exposure over a larger population, thus diluting the lasting impact of the lessons for the individual children. I guess it was better than not offering anything at all, but it became obvious that to provide positive long term results more sustained financial support was needed.
8:41 PM PT: I'm honored to make the rec list and thanks for all the great comments. I added a link to the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory as it adds a lot of compelling data to the opening. It was pointed out to me that the Harmony Project statistics are not all that solid, and I agree, but considered in the context of the ANL conclusions I have left them in.
Also, while this diary focused on music and it's influence on cognition, I in no way meant to diminish the importance of the other visual and performing arts. I have taught Visual and Performing Arts for Elementary Teachers for many years, and in addition to music I also hold degrees in Art and Creative Writing. I am a passionate advocate for Arts Integration (A.I.) and believe in a universal field of learning. Visual art, theater and movement all contribute to improved academic outcomes for children and in a later diary I am sure I will write about the whole enchilada.