The Brain and Creativity Institute (BCI) at USC began the five-year study in 2012 in

partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the Heart of Los Angeles
(HOLA) to examine the impact of music instruction on childrens social, emotional and
cognitive development.

For this longitudinal study, the neuroscientists are monitoring brain development and
behavior in a group of 37 children from underprivileged neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

Thirteen of the children, at 6 or 7 years old, began to receive music instruction through
the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles program at HOLA. The community music training
program was inspired by the El Sistema method, one that LA Philharmonic conductor
Gustavo Dudamel had been in when he was growing up in Venezuela.

Within two years of the study, the neuroscientists found the auditory systems of children
in the music program were maturing faster in them than in the other children. The fine-
tuning of their auditory pathway could accelerate their development of language and
reading, as well as other abilities a potential effect which the scientists are continuing
to study.

Musical training can have a dramatic impact on your brains structure, enhancing your
memory, spatial reasoning and language skills

While brain training games and apps may not live up to their hype, it is well established
that certain other activities and lifestyle choices can have neurological benefits that
promote overall brain health and may help to keep the mind sharp as we get older. One
of these is musical training. Research shows that learning to play a musical instrument is
beneficial for children and adults alike, and may even be helpful to patients recovering
from brain injuries.

Playing a musical instrument is a rich and complex experience that involves integrating
information from the senses of vision, hearing, and touch, as well as fine movements,
and learning to do so can induce long-lasting changes in the brain. Professional musicians
are highly skilled performers who spend years training, and they provide a natural
laboratory in which neuroscientists can study how such changes referred to as
experience-dependent plasticity occur across their lifespan.

Music reaches parts of the brain that other things cant, says Loveday. Its a strong
cognitive stimulus that grows the brain in a way that nothing else does, and the evidence
that musical training enhances things like working memory and language is very robust.

A fast-growing number of schools are entirely removing music from the curriculum
altogether, faced with the double whammy of sustained cuts to school budgets and a
burgeoning teacher recruitment crisis. The combination of these events threatens to be
calamitous.
Like drama and sport, music needs special considerations and an environment different
from the other subjects to thrive; try to squeeze it into the same box as science or history
and it will surely die. Music needs time, it needs support, it needs flexibility, it needs
money. It needs to be valued and it needs to be protected and fought for.
In the words of the great Hungarian composer and educational philosopher Zoltan
Kodly: Music is for everyone. It is a part of all of our lives: whether it comes
through streaming apps, radio, adverts or films/TV shows, we cant escape it.
Often, the most important moments in our existence are shot through with memories of
music. Our earliest memories often include music: our mothers comforting us with song,
songs we first learnt at school, the themes of our favourite television show etc. Even the
smaller more day-to-day occasions often include music, such as dinner with family and
friends, birthdays and celebrations. Music has the power to evoke time, places and
people; music can instantly transport us to a time and place.
Music is an essential part of that discovery. Lets not allow music education to slip away.

Music connects us to our deepest and most profound emotions. It gives a voice to what
we truly feel, regardless of whether we can find the words to express it or not. It touches
us deeply and profoundly. Thats why it matters to all of us so much.
Great music, like all great art, is the combination of two things. Firstly, the power to affect
us very deeply on an emotional level and secondly, great aesthetic intelligence. Without
intelligence, we risk creating sentimental disposable pap, the equivalent of junk food
instantly enjoyable and forgettable but without substance or the power to truly nourish
us. Without emotional authenticity, we create the intellectual ivory tower, the emotional
artic inaccessible to all but the few and lacking in humanity.
To create great music, this marriage of emotion and mind requires a lively intelligence,
creativity, discipline and dedication. To perform it meaningfully requires the technical
skill and dexterity combined with the power to touch the heart.
1. Early music education exposure helps develop brain areas involved in language and
reasoning our first example of the twelve benefits of music education. It is thought that
brain development continues for many years after birth. Recent studies have clearly
indicated that musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain
known to be involved with processing language, and can actually wire the brains circuits
in specific ways. Linking familiar songs to new information can also help imprint
information on young minds.

2. Music education research shows a causal link between music and spatial intelligence
(the ability to perceive the world accurately and to form mental pictures of things). This
kind of intelligence, by which one can visualize various elements that should go together,
is critical to the sort of thinking necessary for everything from solving advanced
mathematics problems to being able to pack a book-bag with everything that will be
needed for the day.

3. Students of the arts learn to think creatively and to solve problems by imagining
various solutions, rejecting outdated rules and assumptions. Questions about the arts do
not have only one right answer.

4. Another example of the twelve benefits of music education is found in recent studies
that show students who study the arts are more successful on standardized tests such
as the SAT. They also achieve higher grades in high school.

5. A study of the arts provides children with an internal glimpse of other cultures and
teaches them to be empathetic towards the people of these cultures. This development
of compassion and empathy, as opposed to development of greed and a me first
attitude, provides a bridge across cultural chasms that leads to respect of other races at
an early age.

6. Students exposed to music education learn craftsmanship as they study how details
are put together painstakingly and what constitutes good, as opposed to mediocre,
work. These standards, when applied to a students own work, demand a new level of
excellence and require students to stretch their inner resources.

7. In music, a mistake is a mistake; the instrument is in tune or not, the notes are well
played or not, the entrance is made or not. It is only by much hard work that a successful
performance is possible. Through music study, students learn the value of sustained
effort to achieve excellence and the concrete rewards of hard work.

8. Music education enhances teamwork skills and discipline. In order for an orchestra to
sound good, all players must work together harmoniously towards a single goal, the
performance, and must commit to learning music, attending rehearsals, and practicing.

9. Music education provides children with a means of self-expression. Now that there is
relative security in the basics of existence, the challenge is to make life meaningful and
to reach for a higher stage of development. Everyone needs to be in touch at some time
in his life with his core, with what he is and what he feels. Self-esteem is a by-product of
this self-expression.

10. Music education develops skills that are necessary in the workplace. It focuses on
doing, as opposed to observing, and teaches students how to perform, literally,
anywhere in the world. Employers are looking for multi-dimensional workers with the
sort of flexible and supple intellects that music education helps to create as described
above. In the music classroom, students can also learn to better communicate and
cooperate with one another.

11. Music performance teaches young people to conquer fear and to take risks. A little
anxiety is a good thing, and something that will occur often in life. Dealing with it early
and often makes it less of a problem later. Risk-taking is essential if a child is to fully
develop his or her potential. Music contributes to mental health and can help prevent
risky behavior such as teenage drug abuse, which often leads to institutionalization in a
teen rehab.

12. Our final example of the twelve benefits of music education is that an arts education
exposes children to the incomparable.