After musical (but not painting) training, children showed enhanced reading and pitch discrimination abilities in speech. Remarkably, 6 months of musical training thus suffices to significantly improve behavior and to influence the development of neural processes as reflected in specific pattern of brain waves. These results reveal positive transfer from music to speech and highlight the influence of musical training. Finally, they demonstrate brain plasticity in showing that relatively short periods of training have strong consequences on the functional organization of the children's brain.(Via BPS).
Monday, March 16, 2009
Music Enhances the Brain
From Musical Training Influences Linguistic Abilities in 8-Year-Old Children: More Evidence for Brain Plasticity, in Cerebral Cortex 19 no. 3 (2009):712-723.
Hi Stuart.
ReplyDeleteThis is good to see. Music has so many elements of connection to the way we process the world that it does make sense.
We’ve been finding a correlation between music and brain fitness from the other side. Mind Sparke customers who are musicians have noted that their ability to play and even appreciate music jumped and stayed higher after they used Brain Fitness Pro.
The training is based on Susanne Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl’s study — Improving Fluid Intelligence by Training Working Memory (PNAS April 2008) — which recorded increases in mental agility (fluid intelligence) of more than 40% after 19 days of focused brain training.
Martin
http://www.mindsparke.com
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