Music lessons can boost brainpower

Want to improve your brain power? Pick up a guitar!
Children who receive regular music lessons display increased brain function throughout their adult life, a new study has claimed.
The study using functional MRI brain imaging shows a possible biological link between early musical training and improved executive functioning in both children and adults, researchers said.
Executive functions are the high-level cognitive processes that enable people to quickly process and retain information, regulate their behaviours, make good choices, solve problems, plan and adjust to changing mental demands.
"Since executive functioning is a strong predictor of academic achievement, even more than IQ, we think our findings have strong educational implications," said study senior investigator Nadine Gaab, from the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children's Hospital.

"While many schools are cutting music programmes and spending more and more time on test preparation, our findings suggest that musical training may actually help to set up children for a better academic future," said Gaab.

Gaab and colleagues compared 15 musically trained children, 9 to 12, with a control group of 12 untrained children of the same age.
Musically trained children had to have played an instrument for at least two years in regular private music lessons.
The researchers similarly compared 15 adults who were active professional musicians with 15 non-musicians. Both control groups had no musical training beyond general school requirements.

The groups, also matched for IQ, underwent a battery of cognitive tests, and the children also had functional MRI imaging (fMRI) of their brains during testing.
On cognitive testing, adult musicians and musically trained children showed enhanced performance on several aspects of executive functioning.
On fMRI, the children with musical training showed enhanced activation of specific areas of the prefrontal cortex during a test that made them switch between mental tasks.
These areas, the supplementary motor area, the pre-supplementary area and the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, are known to be linked to executive function.
"Our results may also have implications for children and adults who are struggling with executive functioning, such as children with ADHD or [the] elderly," said Gaab.

The study appears in the journal PLOS ONE.