Scientists have discovered that music training has significant influences on the brain development of young children leading to improved memory over the course of a year. The fact that musical training changes the way the brain reacts to music might not be very surprising, but researchers also found that the musically trained children performed better in a memory test that is correlated with other skills such as literacy, verbal memory, visio-spatial processing, mathematics and intelligence.
Studies have also shown that older children taking music lessons show greater improvements in IQ scores and that the children taking music lessons improved on general memory skills that are correlated with non-musical abilities such as literacy, verbal memory, Visio spatial processing and mathematics than the children who did not take music lessons. There is enough research in this area to suggest that musical training has an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention.
In particular, it is early music training that appears to most strengthen the connections between brain neurons and perhaps even leads to the establishment of new pathways. But research shows music training has more than a casual relationship to the long-term development of specific parts of the brain too.
These latest findings build even a stronger case for music study from the early school years itself besides the so many other traditional reasons. In spite of so much of such latest researched findings it is surprising and incomprehensible why the Ministry of Education is so bent on reducing the whatever little time that our children have for music in the primary schools now.
