Music & Neuroscience
If you ever doubted the beneficial results from participation in music, here is once again, scientific fact that it does. These quotes are from a recent neurological conference in San Diego.
“Music making is a multisensory experience activating links to several parts of the brain.”
– Gottfriend Schlaug
Associate Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
“New studies show that musical training enhances the brain’s ability to do other things. The trained brain gets better at detecting patterns in sounds, so that musicians are better at picking out the voice of a friend in a noisy restaurant. Musical experience improves abilities important in daily life. Singing and playing an instrument helps youngsters better process speech in noisy classrooms and more accurately interpret the nuances of language that are conveyed by subtle changes in the human voice. When people first learn to talk and when they talk to babies they often use musical patterns in their speech. Music training is not only beneficial for processing music stimuli. We’ve found that years of music training may also improve how sounds are processed for language and emotion. The very responses that are enhanced in musicians are deficient in clinical populations such as children with developmental dyslexia and autism.”
– Nina Kraus
Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory Director, Northwestern University
“New studies show that music doesn’t involve just hot spots in the brain, but large swaths on both sides of the brain.
– Aniruddh D. Patel
The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego
