Parents take note: Musical training can improve working memory in kids

A new study says that musically trained children have greater activation in brain regions related to attention control and executive functions.

If you want your kids to be more intelligent and sharper, read on. Neuroscientists have found new evidence that learning to play an instrument may be good for the brain. According to the study at Pontifical Catholic University in Chile, musically trained children have greater activation in brain regions related to attention control and executive functions, known to be associated with improved reading, higher resilience, greater creativity, and a better quality of life. Researchers say that the most important finding is that two different mechanisms seem to underlie the better performance of musically trained children in the attention and working memory (WM) task. One that supports more domain-general attention mechanisms and another that supports more domain-specific auditory encoding mechanisms.

2 hours of music a day shows benefits

Here, "domain" refers to how sensorial modalities -- types of senses such as heat, sound, or light -- are encoded by the brain, while domain-specific means that only one vs. more than one sensorial modality is processed, the team explained. Both mechanisms seem to have improved functions in musically trained children. For the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, the research team tested the attention and working memory of 40 Chilean children between 10-13 years of age.

Twenty played an instrument, had had at least two years of lessons, practised at least 2 hours a week and regularly played in an orchestra or ensemble. Twenty control children, recruited from public schools in Santiago, had had no musical training other than in the school curriculum. Their attention and working memory were assessed through the previously developed and validated "bimodal (auditory/visual) attention and working memory (WM) task".

Music increases functional activity in brain

During this task, the research team monitored the brain activity of the children with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), detecting small changes in blood flow within the brain. There was no difference between the two groups in reaction time. However, musically trained children did significantly better on the memory task. The research team suspect music training increases the functional activity of these brain networks. The next step of the project is to establish the causality of the mechanisms we found for improving attention and working memory, researchers say.

Other benefits of music for children

Music is good for children and previous research has shown that it can benefit a child in many ways. As the above-mentioned study shows, music can enhance brain function in children. Playing an instrument, singing or just listening to music stimulates the brain, which facilitates the formation of new neural connections. It leads to improved speech development helps with sound recognition. Listening to musical beats can also give your child better maths skills as it improves memory, attention and concentration.

According to a study at the University of Helsinki, music playschool significantly improved the development of children's phoneme processing and vocabulary skills, compared to their peers either attending to similarly organized dance lessons or not attending to either activity. This was published in Scientific Reports. Another study in Frontiers in Neuroscience says that structured music lessons significantly enhance children's cognitive abilities -- including language-based reasoning, short-term memory, planning and inhibition -- leading to improved academic performance.

(With inputs from IANS)