It is remarkable how children, especially infants are able to perceive, analyze and distinguish various elements in music. They are not passively listeners to music, music is not just washing over them. Now that effective scientific methods of investigation have been innovated, we can see that infants are “active listeners and adept learners” (Trehub, 2010, p. 79).

In June of 2017, I was steeped in forums discussing the beauty and power of music. I was steeped in the possibility that music education and music therapy may finally be coming into its place in the word of medicine and education. I’ve always dreamed big but this was outstripping my best dreams.

For years, this question was the final exam in a class I taught for master’s music education students at the Boston Conservatory. Since the time I taught this class, hundreds of articles on neuroscience and music have been published. It has become a fast growing sector of neuroscience with labs all around the world studying it.

It makes no sense that background music could change your IQ. It’s just as unreasonable to expect that listening to foreign language recordings will make you bilingual. In language learning, great gains are made if you have to engage in listening and talking.

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.