Making Music Makes Us Smarter

So you didn’t become a concert pianist after all those music lessons as a kid. They were still worth it. A new study from Northwestern University shows that the number of years a person practices music strongly correlates with enhanced basic sound encoding mechanisms that also are relevant for speech.

In fact, according to the study, music training may be more important for enhancing verbal communication skills than learning phonics.

“Audiovisual processing was much enhanced in musicians’ brains compared to non-musician counterparts, and musicians also were more sensitive to subtle changes in both speech and music sounds,” said Nina Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences and Neurobiology and director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, where the work was performed.

Since music is inherently more accessible to children than phonics, the new research suggests music training may provide considerable benefits for developing literacy skills.

The study, “Musicians Have Enhanced Subcortical Auditory and Audiovisual Processing of Speech and Music,” was published online the week of September 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The co-investigators are Gabriella Musacchia, Mikko Sams, Erika Skoe and Nina Kraus.

Click here to read Northwestern’s study synopsis (mercifully in lay language).