Music helps boost certain brain functions in teenagers

Love listening to music? It may pay off, as a new study suggests that music training could help improve the teenage brain's responses to sound and sharpen hearing and language skills.

Senior study author Nina Kraus, and director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at the Northwestern University, said that although learning to play music does not teach skills that seem directly relevant to most careers, the results suggest that music may engender what educators refer to as "learning to learn."

The authors wrote that their results supported the notion that the adolescent brain remains receptive to training, underscoring the importance of enrichment during the teenage years.

The study is due to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).