If you want to improve your academic level, take a music class! Studies have shown that taking music lessons can improve your academic ability. There is only one catch: you need to start your lessons … 18 years ago. Children who take music lessons have improved academic ability in the future at the college level. Fortunately, there is no need to fret — learning an instrument also has positive implications when it comes to aging. It improves cognition and memory and can protect against age-related diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. However, what exactly is this magical connection that can turn ordinary children into geniuses or reverse memory loss that happens with aging?
Music training has been shown to change the structure of the brain, known as brain plasticity. Brain plasticity is what allows us to learn new things, from skills like coding to the entire Krebs cycle from biology class. For every new thing learned, the brain’s structure changes. It makes sense that learning a new instrument also causes a change in brain structure, so why are we focusing on music and not another arbitrary topic? The special result of learning music is that it changes structures in the brain other than the ones specifically used for making music. A group of researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center found that white matter increased in the temporal lobe in adults who could identify the tone of a pitch compared to adults who could not. Auditory processing occurs in the temporal lobe, explaining why we see this change happening there related to exercises that musicians have experience in.
In contrast, circling back to the study mentioned earlier, engagement in musical training during childhood was actually able to predict academic performance at the college level. When the brain changes, it does not just change randomly. Different parts of the brain have specific functions that cause structures in the brain to grow or shrink depending on how often they are used. There are connections between neurons called synapses. As a person repeats an action, such as playing the piano, the brain prioritizes the connections responsible for playing the piano, such as areas related to memory, auditory, and motor function. As a person plays the piano more and more, these connections become even stronger. If this person starts to play the piano less, these connections will start to weaken, and eventually the connections will cease to exist altogether. We can understand the changing brain better by looking at studies that show how music changes the brains of music makers, from children to adults. Sima Anvari and his team of researchers from McMaster University in Canada found a positive correlation between pitch perception and reading abilities. Broca’s area is an area of the brain that is activated when we produce language. Elif Ozdemir and his lab have shown that as adult singers actively sing, Broca’s area is activated. The same changes that occur when children play instruments also occur when children are learning vocabulary words, how to speak, and how to read, demonstrating how pitch perception and reading abilities have a positive correlation.
“The same changes that occur when children play instruments also occur when children are learning vocabulary words, how to speak, and how to read, demonstrating how pitch perception and reading abilities have a positive correlation.”
While learning how different structures can change by playing music during childhood development is interesting, it does not stop there. Learning music has been shown to require communication between different areas in the brain. The usage of all these different areas in the brain has been hypothesized to delay cognitive impairment with age. A twin study by Alison Balbag, Nancy Pedersen, and Margaret Gatz found that the twin who played an instrument had a lower chance of developing dementia compared to the twin who did not play an instrument. They controlled for sex, education, and physical activity as confounding factors.
There is a lot of data that suggests that music changes the structures of the brain, which, in turn, can lead to altered behavior, such as improvement in class or decline of aging. However, a lot more data needs to be produced on this idea in practice. The studies that exist about the effect of music on non-musical actions are highly correlational and many do not account for confounding variables. Additionally, a question has come up of whether the music making itself is responsible for some of the brain structure questions or if some people are born with some of the brain structures that then give them an affinity for and attraction towards music. Some studies, especially longitudinal studies, have sought to find that music is what causes these brain changes, not the other way around. More of these longitudinal studies should be done in order to establish this link.
Ultimately, music has benefits throughout our lifespans and it is never too late to learn an instrument and improve your brain health!
