Neuroscience: A Context from Which to Advocate for Music Education

Music education often seems to be at risk of decreased funding or total elimination. The shortsightedness of this, in light of neuroscience findings in music research, astounds me. It is clearly a move in the wrong direction.

There is abundant evidence that music is primary to comprehensive brain functioning and that it optimizes development in many nonmusical areas of great import. In addition, it has the capacity to promote character development, empathy and leadership skills with abundant opportunities for peer collaboration and socialization. Peers are working together to create beauty, to achieve a higher goal through individual preparation and mutual cooperation. These are all key traits for success in the workforce and for success in life.

Let’s begin with my first point - optimal brain development. As the neuroscientist Nina Kraus says, “to be a musician is to be a consummate multi-tasker.” Playing music requires advanced skills in auditory perception (pitch discrimination, playing in tune, creating sounds in the present and judging them against sounds you played in the past while planning for the future), motor control (for respiration and the fine motor control required for singing or playing an instrument), visual perception (reading and decoding music notation), pattern recognition (assessing right/wrong, playing scales and arpeggios, theory, harmony), and memory (both short term and long term). This type of multi-tasking creates neural pathways that make a musician’s brain distinct from a non-musician’s. It is the right type of neural engagement to optimize development.

No music center has been discovered in the brain. There are primary centers in the brain for language, for speech, for voluntary movement, and for visual perception. But there is no such center for music. The requirements of music are so comprehensive that the brain is diffusely activated in a way that no other skill requires. The engagement of making music is a tour de force for the brain, one that requires us, and in fact trains us, to be ‘consummate multi-taskers.’ Music training affords the person with the ability to more accurately pronounce words in foreign languages (Milovanov, et al., 2010), have superior spatial tactile acuity (Ragert et al., 2004), hear speech better in background noise (Strait et al., 2013), respond faster to emotional statements (Strait et al., 2009), enhanced auditory attention and working memory (Chan et al., 1998; Jakobson et al., 2008; Parbery-Clark et al., 2009b, 2011a; Strait et al., 2012b, 2013a; Kraus et al., 2012), and to have executive function and auditory attention control (Hannon & Trainor, 2007; Bialystok & DePape, 2009; Strait et al., 2010; Moreno et al., 2011; Strait & Kraus, 2011; Strait et al., 2012b).

The perception of music begins in the womb (in the final trimester). This complex neural experience begins to shape the brain and helps infants learn language, guide social bonding and interactions.

Regarding character development, the opportunity to lead, follow and encourage peers is inherent in the making of music. A great music educator knows how to provide ample opportunities to assume roles that develop skills in character and leadership, notably responsibility and integrity. I recall my high school music educator speaking to me when I ascended to the first chair clarinet position. He asked me who I intended to be to the last person in my section - better than or helpful? The choice was easy to make but not implicit in the position I had earned. That one question has informed my whole relationship to music, to teaching and to being a member of an ensemble. Competition is inherent in music and drives us to a personal best. But it is collaboration that is the key to ensemble success. It’s a winning combination for the developing child.

The emotional spectrum of music provides children with appropriate outlets and inlets for feelings. For example, one can relate to the awe Beethoven found in nature while listening to his Pastoral Symphony. Billy Holiday’s recording of ‘Strange Fruit’ can convey the angst, despair and disgust of African Americans and other humanists during the fight for basic civil rights. Music also provides a way to express feelings. A drum can accept anger. In fact, it may be the most appropriate expression of this intense emotion. Eventually one’s hands will hurt and you will begin to find other gentler voices and grooves. The chaotic fierce energy of anger will be discharged and one can emerge with a sense of order.

Not everybody will go to music school and let me be clear, this is never going to be my point for advocacy of music education. I believe that we should provide a proper music education for each and every child so that they will known how to find comfort, joy and motivation throughout their lives. they deserve to explore this rich cognitive and emotional subject just as much as they do language arts, math, science, physical education and history. And I guarantee that teaching a child music is the gift that lasts a lifetime.