Learning to Play Music Stimulates Growth in the Brain

From a study by Amir Lahav and Gottfried Schlaug:

<quote> A new imaging study shows that when we learn a new action with associated sounds, the brain quickly makes links between regions responsible for performing the action and those associated with the sound. </quote>

The findings may contribute to understanding how we acquire language and how we think of actions if we only hear their sounds, say authors Amir Lahav, ScD, and Gottfried Schlaug, MD, PhD, of the neurology department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. Their work is described in the January 10 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

Music Instruction Improves SAT Scores

Students who had 4 or more years of music instruction outperformed most other groups on the SAT exams, scoring an average of 56 points higher on the verbal portion of the test and 39 points higher on the math portion than students with no coursework or experience in the arts. Scores for those with coursework in music appreciation were 60 points higher on the verbal and 39 points higher on the math portion.

Music Instruction Improves Vocabulary

Thanks this time goes to Deric Bownds' Mindblog, where Dr. Bownds is aggregating research, as I am. Dr. Bownds blogged about a study by Marie Forgeard, Ellen Winner, Andrea Norton, and Gottfried Schlaug:

<quote> Children who received at least three years (M = 4.6 years) of instrumental music training outperformed their control counterparts on two outcomes closely related to music (auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills) and on two outcomes distantly related to music (vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills). Duration of training also predicted these outcomes. Contrary to previous research, instrumental music training was not associated with heightened spatial skills, phonemic awareness, or mathematical abilities. </quote>

El Sistema Project begins in Scotland

From my email, this press release from Peter Stevenson:

Java Sparrows Go for Baroque

For the last for a while of the lighter side series of classical music research, it so happens that S. Watanabe and and M. Nemoto continued their work with Java Sparrows: