Music and brain development in kids

Music lessons for a young child could be the best investment in brain development reported in a study at University of Vermont College of Medicine. The study is called “the largest investigation of the association between playing a musical instrument and brain development.” The child psychiatry team found that musical training might help children focus their attention, control their emotions and diminish their anxiety. The research is published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, according to Science Daily.

Researchers say the study is “the largest investigation of the association between playing a musical instrument and brain development.” In coordination with the National Institutes of Health Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Study of Normal Brain Development, James Hudziak, M.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families et al analyzed the brain scans of 232 children 6-18 years of age.

“As children age, the cortex -- the outer layer of the brain -- changes in thickness. In previous analysis of MRI data, Hudziak and his team discovered that cortical thickening or thinning in specific areas of the brain reflected the occurrence of anxiety and depression, attention problems, aggression and behavior control issues even in healthy kids -- those without a diagnosis of a disorder or mental illness. With this study, Hudziak wanted to see whether a positive activity, such as music training, would influence those indicators in the cortex,” they said in Science Daily.

Hudziak created a model to establish that a young person’s environment including parents, teachers, friends, pets, and extracurricular activities all contribute to a child’s psychological health. 

“Music is a critical component in the model,” Hudziak emphasized.

The researchers discovered that playing music altered the motor areas of the brain requiring control and coordination of movement.  Additionally, and even more stunning is there were changes in the behavior-regulating areas of the brain.  Music practice influenced thickness in the part of the cortex relates to “executive functioning, including working memory, attention control, and organization and planning for the future.

A child's musical background also appears to correlate with cortical thickness in "brain areas that play a critical role in inhibitory control, as well as aspects of emotion processing, they said in the study.

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Hudziak’s hypothesis states playing the violin could help child battle psychological disorders better than medication.

"We treat things that result from negative things, but we never try to use positive things as treatment," he says.

The American Psychological Association has embraced music therapy, but do not imply it replaces medication in a 2013 article called “Music as Medicine.” Music therapy lowered the parents' stress, says Joanne Loewy, the study's lead author, director of the Armstrong center and co-editor of the journal Music and Medicine.

"There's just something about music — particularly live music — that excites and activates the body," says Loewy, whose work is part of a growing movement of music therapists and psychologists who are investigating the use of music in medicine to help patients dealing with pain, depression and possibly even Alzheimer's disease. "Music very much has a way of enhancing quality of life and can, in addition, promote recovery."

If Hudziak is going to rely on music programs in public education, there are encumbrances because music programs have all but disappeared.  According to the study's authors, research from the U.S. Department of Education indicates that three-quarters of U.S. high school students "rarely or never" take extracurricular lessons in music or the arts.

Music lessons disappearing from public education

The Dept. of Education statistic is disturbing, but not surprising, as funding sources for music; sports; and the arts have slowly diminished as revenue streams for so-called “extracurricular” school programs have been eliminated beginning in the late 1980s into the 1990s and exacerbated by The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which impacted low-income children disproportionately whose parents could not afford private music lessons.

Historically elementary schools offered free music lessons to students, so they could explore playing musical instruments and discover what they liked.  This writer’s son was able to take drum music lessons in elementary school in the 1980s, which he continued throughout junior high and high school and enriched his adult life.  Those music programs together with the school library have been gone for many years.

Today the NCLB is uniformly blamed for stripping curriculum opportunities, including art, music, physical education and more, and imposing a brutal testing regime that has forced educators to focus their time and energy on preparing for tests in a narrow range of subjects:  namely, English/language arts and math.  For students in low-income communities, the impact has been devastating as families struggle just to get through the Great Recession. Once those programs have been eliminated, it is even more difficult to financially reinstate them.

Music lessons in schools and low-income families are considered an added benefit if funding sources and expenses allow it.  Studies like Dr. Hudziak’s contribute to a body of evidence that early childhood music lessons have benefits far beyond childhood and should be considered when public schools evaluate budgets.

"Such statistics, when taken in the context of our present neuroimaging results," the Vermont College researchers write, "underscore the vital importance of finding new and innovative ways to make music training more widely available to youths, beginning in childhood.”

Resources
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141223132546.htm
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/11/music.aspx
http://neatoday.org/2014/09/02/the-testing-obsession-and-the-disappearing-curriculum-2/