Back to the Future
It’s not that scientists didn’t recognize a connection between the process of making music and increased brain functionality. Many centuries ago, Plato said, “Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education.” And today, scientists have dubbed the 1990s as the “decade of the brain” because of the explosion in brain research. Recently, dramatic new research regarding the benefits of music making might have altered Plato’s views to read, “Making music is a more potent instrument than any other for education.”

Scientists have long suspected a neurological connection between making music and intelligence, but it was not until recently that specific data became available directly linking the two.

Consider the following:
Research completed at the University of Munster in Germany discovered enlarged portions of the brain in children who took music lessons. An area used to analyze the pitch of a musical note was found to be 25% larger in those who participate in making music regularly than in those who have never played an instrument.

A research team exploring the link between making music and intelligence reported that music training (specifically piano instruction) is far superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children’s abstract reasoning skills—mental tools necessary for learning subjects like math and science, or for playing chess and mastering concepts of engineering. Thirty-four percent of the children performed higher on tests measuring these criteria after only six months of piano lessons.

Students with coursework/experience in music performance scored an average of 52 points higher on the verbal portion of the SAT and 36 points higher on the math portion of the SAT than students with no coursework or experience in the arts.

A research team studying first-graders from two Rhode Island elementary schools found that students who participated in a regular and structured music learning program exhibited dramatic increases in reading and math.

A study in the March 1999 issue of Neurological Research showed that after learning eighth, quarter, half and whole notes, second and third-graders scored 100 percent higher than peers who were taught fractions using traditional methods. Because of this research, we know there is a direct connection between making music and intelligence in children. But how and why does this connection take place?

Exploring the Brain
The brain’s cortex, the center of our intellectual functions, represents 85 percent of brain mass. The remaining 15 percent of the brain, the limbic system, handles our emotional functions. Researchers at McGill University in Montreal found that music functions as a key link between the cortex and limbic systems, suggesting that it’s virtually impossible to study or play a musical instrument without feeling a wide range of positive emotions such as joy, happiness, love and tenderness. From this research, Author Sharlene Habermeyer, in her book, Good Music, Brighter Children, concluded, “...and when we allow these emotions to be a part of the learning process, our education becomes richer, more meaningful, longer lasting, and has greater impact in our lives.”Another study, performed at the University of Texas, found a direct relationship between the brain’s ability to interpret musical notes and passages and written letters and words.

And further research has documented that the sensory input section of a violinist’s brain which registers and controls activity of the left hand was more highly developed than that of the brain area controlling the less active right hand. The research further discovered that the earlier the violinist had begun to play, the greater the sophistication and response characteristics of the left hand cortical area of the brain.

It’s Here in Black and White
But before you rush out to buy your budding Einstein a Stradivarius, consider the results of a landmark study performed by Gordon Shaw and Fran Rauscher. Shaw is a physics professor emeritus at the University of California at Irvine and Rauscher is an accomplished cellist with a doctoral degree in psychology. Their research on music and brain functions made headlines in 1993 with discovery of “The Mozart Effect,” a phenomenon in which college students scored higher on spatial-temporal reasoning tests after listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major.

The latest body of research into music and intelligence includes the active realm of music making. Shaw published a landmark report in the March ’99 issue of Neurological Research based on tests done with 135 second-grade students at 95th Street School in Los Angeles.The research demonstrated that children given four months of piano keyboard training, as well as time playing with newly designed learning software, scored 27 percent higher on proportional math and fraction tests than other children who had not received training.

More >