I dabbled in piano playing as a child. I stopped because I was lank lazy, but I can still sit and play a piece of music (if you give me time).

And, of course, that ability to convert musical notes into precise finger movements is a skill.

Senior research associate at the University of Southern California Assal Habibi wrote a piece published on Quartz, detailing the power learning how to play music holds:

Brain regions that are responsible for our hearing, sight, and movement abilities engage in an amazing symphony to produce music. It takes coordinating both hands and communicating emotionally with other players and listeners to produce the magical effect. The combination of such demands is likely to influence brain structures and their functions.

So what effect does it have on children? Here’s what his study did to find out:

In 2012, our research group at the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California began a five-year study that did just that.

We began to investigate the effects of group-based music training in 80 children between ages six and seven. We have continued to follow them, to explore the effects of such training on their brain, cognitive, social, and emotional development.

We started the study when one group of children were about to begin music training through the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles program. This free community-based music program was inspired by El Sistema, a music program that was started in Venezuela and proved to be “transformative” in changing the lives of underprivileged children.

The second group of children were about to begin a sports-training program with a community-based soccer program. They were not engaged in music training.

A third group of children were from public schools and community centres in the same areas of Los Angeles. All three groups of children were from equally underprivileged and ethnic minority communities of Los Angeles.

And the results? Well, basically, after two years children who had undergone musical training could identify melodies more precisely:

That indicated that children undergoing musical training were more attentive to the melodies. Children in the music group also had stronger brain response to differences in pitch compared with children in the other groups. We also observed that musically trained children had faster development of the brain pathway responsible for encoding and processing sound.

Our findings suggest that music training during childhood, even for a period as brief as two years, can accelerate brain development and sound processing. We believe that this may benefit language acquisition in children given that developing language and reading skills engage similar brain areas. This can particularly benefit at-risk children in low socioeconomic status neighbourhoods who experience more difficulties with language development.

But you knew that already, didn’t you. Because if you’re a parent who cares, you have sorted out your child’s future – as well as your life insurance.

You can read the full study HERE and understand the power of music when both listening and playing.

[source:qz]