Play an Instrument? Musical Training Improves Brain Function

Does the sound of a musical instrument simply lighten your mood? If so, chances are, it's also doing something similar in your brain, as well.

Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital discovered, with the help of functional MRI brain imaging, that playing an instrument early in life supports brain growth and function. Their findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, elaborate on the brain areas associated throughout musical learning.

The study showed that certain executive functions work as the high-level cognitive processes that can enable people to quickly process and retain certain information that's related to behavior and problem solving, as well as planning and making adjustments.

"Since executive functioning is a stroke predictor of academic achievement, even more than IQ, we think our findings have strong educational implications," said senior study investigator Nadine Gaab, PhD, of the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children's, in a news release. "While many schools are cutting music programs and spending more and more time on test preparation, our findings suggest that musical training may actually help to set up children for a better academic future."

For the study, researchers compared 15 musically trained children, 9 to 12, with a control group of 12 untrained children of the same age. All participants who were "musically trained" had actively played an instrument for at least two years through private music lessons. Researchers similarly compared 15 active professional musicians with 15 adults who were not musicians.

When collecting data, researchers accounted for various socioeconomic factors that may have prevented participants from receiving private music lessons. Researchers tested the participants through a variety of cognitive tests and also had functional MRI imaging (fMRI) of their brains during the tests.

Findings revealed that for adult musicians and musically trained children, they showed enhanced performance on several of the executive functioning tests. The fMRI also revealed that children with musical training had enhanced activation of specific areas related to the prenatal cortex that helped them more easily switch between mental tasks.

With future studies, researchers hope to determine if certain children may be predisposed to study music and already equipped with certain executive functioning abilities.

Do you play an instrument?