Why Funding Music Education is an Intelligent Investment

But of all the things that music is – and does – perhaps most astonishing is that it has far reaching benefits to the brain, making it more likely a child will reach his or her full cognitive and academic potential. Studies show music education actually creates more grey matter, improves working memory and long-term memory, improves attention, speech,

listening skills, and reading skills and increases full-scale IQ scores.

1. Neuroscientists have discovered that playing a musical instrument engages practically every area of the brain at once: visual, auditory and motor cortices. By strengthening

those brain functions, music students apply that strength to other activities. For example, after just four weeks of music lessons, young children showed dramatic improvement

in their verbal intelligence.

2 . With music education, fine motor skills also improve, as do linguistic and mathematical precision. Playing music improves activity in the corpus callosum

– which may allow musicians to solve problems more easily in academic and social settings. Playing a musical instrument literally changes the anatomy and function of the brain by creating more neural pathways – new connections the brain uses to retrieve information. Even listening to music is beneficial to the brain. Both classical and jazz music activate the right and left sides of the brain which can increase learning capacity and information retention. One study revealed students were more productive while listening to jazz vs. no music. (Arturo particularly liked that study.)