Music has a profound effect on the developing brains of children. From an early age, music promotes areas of the brain related to language and reasoning. Musical training helps children learn languages more quickly, improves spatial intelligence, and enhances literacy and emotional intelligence. Music also provides children with a creative outlet and boosts self-confidence. Ultimately, music fuels brain development, enhancing cognitive abilities that serve children throughout life.
Does music make you smarter?
Many studies indicate that music instruction boosts general intelligence and academic achievement. Active engagement with music improves verbal memory, spatial reasoning, and literacy skills in children. Musical training may also lift IQ scores by an average of seven points in adults. Music students outperform non-music students on achievement tests in math, languages, and science. The effects of musical training on intellectual development appear to be the most pronounced for kids who begin studying an instrument before age 12.
How does music change the brain?
Playing a musical instrument affects the structure and function of the brain. Brain scans show that musicians have increased grey matter volume in motor, auditory, and visual-spatial regions of the brain. Musicians also exhibit enhanced connectivity between brain hemispheres and greater neural efficiency. Ongoing musical training generates new neural connections and leads to neuroplastic changes in the brain. As the brain evolves to accommodate musical demands, musicians strengthen cognitive capacities including memory, attention, processing speed, and executive function.
Music and language development
Musical training accelerates language acquisition and reading readiness in young children. Music influences auditory processing skills fundamental to language development. Musicians have enhanced speech perception abilities and are better at detecting meaningful, syntactical elements in speech. Musical training also improves phonological awareness – the ability to detect rhythm, rhyme, and individual sounds within words. Phonological awareness, in turn, boosts reading skills. Children who study music tend to have stronger verbal memory and literacy skills compared to their non-musical peers.
Effects of music on spatial intelligence
Learning to read music notation and finger instruments enhances spatial-temporal reasoning in children. Playing music activates regions in the brain involved in spatial intelligence. Musical training improves skills like mental rotation, spatial visualization and spatial working memory. Spatial ability underlies strengths in higher math, engineering, chess, and science. Children with musical training tend to perform better on tests measuring spatial-temporal cognition.
Music boosts executive function
Making music challenges cognitive skills like attention, planning, organization, inhibitory control and working memory. Musical training strengthens these executive functions, conferring advantages in thinking, reasoning, and creativity. Executive function also underlies abilities like expressing emotion, appreciating humor, and making ethical decisions. In studies, musically trained kids show enhanced executive function, allowing them to more efficiently plan, organize, and complete cognitive tasks.
Effects of music training on literacy
Reading and music rely on similar cognitive processes and neural pathways. Music instruction promotes phonological awareness, sound discrimination, and mapping of visual symbols to sounds. These skills boost children’s reading fluency and comprehension. Students who study music tend to have enhanced vocabulary knowledge and reading ability. Musicians generally exhibit a more pronounced aptitude and enjoyment for reading. Evidence indicates music training may remediate reading disorders like dyslexia.
Music enhances emotional intelligence
Making music involves interpreting and conveying emotion. Musical training helps children better recognize emotions from facial expressions, speech patterns and body language. Music provides children with a means of creatively expressing feelings in a healthy way. Group music activities teach kids about collaboration, empathy and social skills. Musicstudy also encourages self-discipline, determination, and perseverance. The combination of enhanced emotional intelligence and executive function from musical study cultivates well-adjusted, mentally flexible children.
Music as a creative outlet
Music provides a constructive expressive outlet for elementary and middle school kids. Music education allows children to develop their creative identity. Students exercise their imaginations, take risks, and think in innovative ways. Creativity fuels broader innovative thinking and problem-solving skills. Making music also builds confidence by giving children a sense of achievement and validation. Group musical activities help kids learn to take constructive criticism and work as a team.
Music education and self-esteem
Dedicated music practice promotes self-esteem and self-confidence in children. Working toward music goals helps children learn diligence and perseverance. Group musical activities provide a sense of belonging. Music also allows kids to discover and demonstrate their unique talents. Success and positive feedback enhance motivation. Singing and playing a musical instrument give children the chance to perform and receive validation from parents, teachers and peers. The sense of accomplishment boosts belief in their abilities.
Cognitive benefits of learning an instrument
Playing an instrument engages almost every area of the brain at once, making it an excellent brain exercise. Instrumentalists must simultaneously read musical notation, manipulate their fingers, listen, anticipate upcoming notes, and adjust accordingly. This cross-training strengthens connections between the sensory, motor and planning regions of the brain. Musicians tend to have enhanced hand-eye coordination and dexterity. Making music improves balance and control over gross and fine motor movements. Playing an instrument also exercises memory and teaches discipline.
Benefits of singing in children
Singing provides a fun musical outlet with similar benefits to playing an instrument. Singing enhances listening and auditory discernment skills in kids. Using their voice as an instrument strengthens memorization, collaboration and creative self-expression. Group singing improves mood, motivation and relationships. Singing also challenges the brain with the cognitive demands of controlling pitch, tone, rhythm and melody. Children who sing tend to have better literacy, verbal memory and emotional intelligence.
Transfer of music benefits to academics
Music instruction cultivates cognitive capacities that support academic success. Musical training enhances reading, comprehension, vocabulary, and mathematical abilities. Children with musical training tend to have better working memory; allowing them to more efficiently process and retrieve information. Enhanced executive function from music practice underlies skills like focusing attention, troubleshooting, and shifing approaches as needed. Multitasking and creative thinking skills also transfer to problem-solving across academic subjects.
Music ignites motivation and joy of learning
Musical engagement nurtures children’s innate enjoyment of learning. Music captures kids’ excitement and interest. Interactive musical activities make learning fun while conveying knowledge and skills. Rhythm, patterns and sequences in music implicitly develop children’s math aptitude. Singing and playing instruments help anchor knowledge and skills in memory. Children absorb and retain information more readily when presented in a musical format. Associating learning with music helps kids develop a lifelong passion for discovery.
| Age Group | Music Benefits |
|---|---|
| Babies & toddlers | – Stimulates auditory processing – Enhances language acquisition – Improves sensory-motor skills – Boosts spatial-temporal reasoning |
| Preschoolers | – Refines auditory & speech perception – Develops phonological awareness & literacy skills – Promotes memorization ability – Enhances creative self-expression |
| Early elementary school | – Magnifies vocabulary acquisition and reading readiness – Sharpens concentration & mental focus – Fuels motivation & self-discipline – Teaches teamwork and social skills |
| Upper elementary & middle school | – Strengthens executive functions like planning and problem-solving – Heightens spatial-temporal reasoning abilities – Provides a constructive creative outlet – Boosts memory, literacy & math achievement |
Music training versus passive music listening
Many cognitive and social benefits of music rely on active participation. Playing an instrument requires more goal-directed brain activity than passively listening to music. Making music sharpens auditory acuity, sensory-motor skills and cognitive flexibility in a way listening alone cannot. Learning to sing or play an instrument exercises executive function in a way that just listening does not. Collaboration in musical groups also hones social skills that kids would not get from listening to music by themselves.
Learning music early maximizes benefits
Children realize the greatest cognitive gains when musical training begins at an early age. Neural plasticitygradually declines as the brain matures. Nervous system adaptations that confer cognitive advantages result from intense, continuous musical study – particularly before age 12. Early music instruction also takes advantage of children’s excitement to explore and learn. Starting music early allows for longer periods of active participation to mold young brains in advantageous ways.
Conclusion
Music integrates sensory, motor and cognitive activity in the brain. This combination stimulates brain networks that are key to enhancing memory, focus, literacy, spatial reasoning and other intellectual aptitudes. Active engagement with music sparks neurodevelopmental changes that reshape children’s brains in lasting, beneficial ways. Music enhances general learning capabilities at an age when the brain is rapidly evolving. The cognitive benefits of early musical training extend throughout life. Music education nurtures children’s innate joy of discovery while enriching the capacities that underlie academic, occupational and interpersonal success.
