Music lessons influence children's brain activity
Scientists at Heidelberg University Hospital and the University of Graz have investigated how learning a musical instrument at an early age has a long-term effect on children's brain development.
If both ears receive the same information, the right and left auditory cortex of the brain work practically synchronously in musically trained children. In untrained children, they are slightly out of sync; in children with ADHD, the scientists were even able to detect a marked time shift between the two hemispheres of the brain in their current study.
This discovery could explain why auditory processing and perception disorders, ADHD and dyslexia often occur together, explains Annemarie Seither-Preisler from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Graz, one of the authors of the study. Some of the problems of the affected children are likely to be due to insufficient cooperation between the two hemispheres, with negative consequences for attention, rapid language processing and reading and spelling skills.
The team also found that the gray matter in the auditory cortex of musically active children is around half the size of that of their peers. Long-term observation showed that this brain region already had a very specific shape and size before musical training and did not change over time.
As a next step, the team would like to investigate whether auditory processing and perception disorders can be diagnosed at an early stage using neurological measurements in the brain.
Original article:
Annemarie Seither-Preisler, Richard Parncutt, and Peter Schneider. Size and Synchronization of Auditory Cortex Promotes Musical, Literacy, and Attentional Skills in Children. The Journal of Neuroscience, August 13, 2014, 34(33): 10937-10949; doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5315-13.2014
