According to recent studies in cognitive science, in order for children to experience Musics impact on the brain in positive way, they must engage in extensive musical practice.

1. How Music Primes the Brain
for Learning?
According to recent studies in cognitive science, in order for children to experience Musics
impact on the brain in positive way, they must engage in extensive musical practice.
In a tiny Connecticut high school ten years ago, musician Angélica Durrell started teaching a
group of kids how to play a variety of percussion instruments, including the charango and toyos,
which are native to Central and South America, from whence many of the students had just
moved. After mastering Pachelbel’s Canon on the piano, they went on to The Shirelles’ “Will You
Love Me Tomorrow,” a doo-wop song from the 1960s, and sang it in both English and Spanish.
The after-school music program became well-known in the school district within a few years,
transforming from a “nice-to-have” activity to a strategic tool for addressing some of the district’s
persistent challenges. The program specifically targeted Latino students, many of whom were
struggling academically. It was noted by instructors and administration that Durrell’s pupils were
more regularly present in class, their English was improving, and they were becoming more at
ease socializing with others.
Musics impact on the brain has been shown to have a significant influence on learning from both
a cognitive and a social and emotional learning (SEL) perspective, and Durrell’s non-profit
program Intempo now serves over 3,000 kids each year in Stamford and Norwalk schools. As
Durrell puts it, “we shifted from addressing it from a music viewpoint to approaching it from an
immigrant inclusion, language learning, and grade-level reading-acquisition standpoint.”

2. Learning an instrument or taking voice lessons provides continuous practice of a set of academic
and social-emotional skills crucial to success in school. Learning music, according to the most
recent studies in the cognitive neuroscience of Musics impact on the brain, is associated with
significant benefits for a person’s language abilities, reading ability, memory, and focus—benefits
that are hard to find in other activities, such as sports.
The present condition of music instruction in schools is incredibly inconsistent and almost
nonexistent in certain areas, so experts are hopeful this body of data will lead to change.
According to a poll conducted in 2014 by Americans for the Arts, a non-profit advocacy group,
instructors claimed that 1.3 million primary school pupils did not have access to music programs,
and almost 4 million did not have access to visual arts classes.
Arts engagement and access also varied widely by location, although 2016 statistics from the
National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed advances in several areas. While 68% of
eighth graders attended music class in 2016, kids in the Northeast were twice as likely to attend
music class as students in the South and West, where only 33% of students had access to music
lessons.
After months of school cancellations due to the epidemic, arts tracking groups like the federally
funded Arts Education Partnership are saying it’s impossible to tell how many students are taking
music classes.
Music’s positive effects on the brain;
How the Musics impact on the brain, the basic material of music, language, and (perhaps
counterintuitively) learning to read, is the key to understanding music’s benefits, say experts. The
sounds we hear are carried through a complicated “auditory route” in the brain, which is directly
linked to regions responsible for human movement, thought, speech, knowledge, and focus. In
an interview with Edutopia, neuroscientist and author of the new book Of Sound Mind Nina Kraus
describes the vastness of the hearing brain.

3. A common misconception is that the auditory cortex exists in a separate part of the brain. The act
of listening requires the participation of many brain regions involved in cognition, sensation,
movement, and reinforcement. That’s a very big deal. The ability to interpret sound is very old
and has included many distinct evolutionary processes.
The strength of music education lies in the fact that it utilizes so many distinct brain regions
simultaneously. A student learning to play the violin, for instance, must integrate their motor,
cognitive, and sensory abilities to play the instrument correctly: the student must be able to read
musical notes on a sheet of music and know what sounds they represent, as well as hear if the
pitches and rhythms are correct and coordinate with the other players. The student’s reward
circuitry in the brain may also be stimulated by musical stimulation.
A benefit Musics impact on the brain is learning an instrument is one of the most complex mental
endeavors a person can do since it involves so many different parts of the brain. “Teachers tell
me that kids who play music also perform better in school,” Kraus writes. Also, since their brains
have spent more time “engaged with sound,” young musicians have better language and reading
abilities than their non-musician peers.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re exposed to music on the flute, violin, accordion, piano, or voice;
it will have an effect. Engaging with sound “changes and enhances how the brain reacts to
sound,” Kraus adds.
Music as academic strength training;
While teaching music to kindergarteners at Durban Avenue School in Sussex County, New
Jersey, Shawna Longo shouts out a rhythm, and the kids respond by playing it on their
Boomwhackers, tuned percussion tubes that come in a variety of sizes and colors to represent

4. various pitches. There are just red ones left now.” She yells, “Do ‘I want pepperoni pizza,'” and
the kids all start playing ta-ta-tee-tee-ta-ta. She adds, “Their color is off limits until I hold it up.”
They need to have the ability to balance waiting with play.
Among the most dependable markers that a youngster is ready to learn to read is whether or not
they can hold a steady rhythm and anticipate the following beat. In her latest book, Musics
impact on the brain, education expert Anita Collins argues that the ability to sustain rhythm is
only one of several musical skills that lays the groundwork for learning to read and write.
Learning to read music (i.e., decoding musical notation and relating it to sounds) stimulates the
same “phonological loop” in the brain as when children learn to read words, strengthening
associations between sounds and words. In her book, Collins explains the procedure:
Whether it’s an eighth note D or the letter t at the beginning of a word, the eye perceives a sign
on the paper.
Each individual’s brain has a library of musical and vocal sounds, and when it hears a particular
sound, it retrieves that sound from that library and gives instructions to the body to produce it.
That’s why Musics impact on the brain positively.
The brain first listens to make sure the right noise was produced, and then it makes the
necessary modifications.
Collins writes that recent studies suggest “music and reading may well be complementary
learning activities,” with music serving as a powerful tool to improve language learning. This is
because the same areas of the brain are strengthened by processing sound as are responsible
for learning language and learning to read.
Tone of social unity;
In March of 2020, when news of the Covid-19 lockdowns spread throughout the world, various
films surfaced of Italians singing together on their balconies. Italians used music as a way to
reach out to their community at a period of great stress and isolation.
As a species, we have used music and song to communicate with one another for thousands of
years. Collins tells Edutopia, “Music resides in the oldest area of our brain.” It has been said that
Musics impact on the brain and song predate written language and spoken by at least a
thousand years.

5. Researchers at the University of Toronto revealed in a seminal 2018 study that when adults sang
and danced to music with children as young as one, the youngster was more inclined to assist
after the adult “accidentally” dropped an object. Collins adds that the study’s replications prove
that music’s ability to tap into a primordial relationship has the potential to promote prosocial
conduct like empathy and assisting, which are qualities that both parents and educators value
highly.
Singing the school song during basketball games or the clean-up song in kindergarten is a
powerful exercise for fostering essential human social relationships. Kelly Green, vice president
of education at Kindermusik, an organization that develops evidence-based music curricula for
young children, says, “Singing is a really strong instrument to help youngsters feel in community.”
SEL is a very serious matter.
In a time when youth rates of loneliness, anxiety, and depression are rising rapidly, the social
benefits of singing and producing music together, as those experienced by Italian balcony
singers during lockdown, may be of particular importance for today’s students. But according to
Green, school-aged children now sing far less than their predecessors did. Collins observes that
most of us believe “that studying music is simply to improve as a musician.” People just don’t
have the nerve to sing in public anymore.
Underneath the surface of “I can’t sing, I’m not musical” lies a very real and crippling anxiety.
Singing, as I discover when I begin singing with pupils, is a talent like any other that can be
developed by repetition and exercise. These things begin to occur. They’re experiencing extreme
happiness.
Kids benefit from deep and consistent engagement;

6. Because of financial constraints, increased standardized testing, and a lack of qualified music
teachers, several school districts are reaching out to local nonprofits and community groups for
assistance. The Save the Music Foundation and similar organizations provide funds to schools to
help them buy instruments for students and train teachers.
Underserved youth in the Los Angeles region have access to The Harmony Project’s
comprehensive music education and mentoring program. Memphis, Tennessee’s Soulsville
Charter School, a middle/high school with a musical focus, draws inspiration from its location
near the cradle of American soul music and the iconic Stax Records, thanks to funding from the
Soulsville Foundation.
As Tamu Lucero, superintendent of Stamford Public Schools, puts it, “You have to be ready to
say, ‘We can’t do this alone.'” Durrell’s Intempo program is now an integral part of the district’s
new-arrivals program. In spite of the fact that schools in Stamford already provided weekly music
classes, Lucero says, “we were willing to be open to the notion of how we might engage an
outside partner to expand the learning environment for children.”
Listening to music or producing a song for a class assignment just starts to scratch the surface,
but researchers will continue to uncover some of the reasons why Musics impact on the brain is
so helpful to children. Students may get the most cognitive advantages from music education by
actively participating in musical activities, such as taking voice lessons or learning to play an
instrument. There’s enough data to suggest that giving every child, in every grade, a dedicated
music lesson is money well spent.
Put another way, music education should be mandatory for all kids, as advocated by Nina Kraus.
Period.”

7. Bottom line
Music is the easiest way to enter someone’s soul and it could be an efficient technique in modern
learning as well. It triggers those cells of the brain that works while learning something. As
mentioned above there are various ways through which a Musics impact on the brain can
become more productive and make studies more fun than before.