The study — conducted at York University by Dr. Sylvain Moreno, who is now with Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute (RRI) — is posted online October 4 in Psychological Science (a journal of the Association for Psychological Science), ahead of print publication in the October issue of the journal.

The cognitive benefit was striking and consistent in 90% of the children who took the four-week learning program and was additionally confirmed by brain imaging data that indicated brain changes had taken place related to the training.

“Our data have confirmed a rapid transfer of cognitive benefits in young children after only 20 days of training on an interactive, music-based cognitive training program. The strength of this effect in almost all of the children was remarkable,” said Dr. Moreno, a world expert on neuroeducation. He is now the Lead Scientist at Baycrest’s Centre for Brain Fitness.

The findings have exciting implications for conceptualizing and improving neuroeducation programs for children of all ages, and potentially for older adults.

The scientific team included other prominent researchers in the field of cognitive development — Dr. Ellen Bialystok, York University, and principal collaborator in the study; Dr. Tom Chau, Bloorview Research Institute; and Dr. Glenn Schellenberg, University of Toronto. Artist-educators from The Royal Conservatory’s Learning Through the Arts program conducted the experimental training with pre-schoolers, and George Brown College provided assistance in the earliest stages of software development for the training programs.

“These results are dramatic not only because they clearly connect cognitive improvement to musical training, but also because the improvements in language and attention are found in completely different domains than the one used for training. This has enormous implications for development and education,” said Dr. Bialystok, Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at York University and Associate Scientist at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute.

In the study, 48 pre-schoolers four to six years of age participated in computer-based, cognitive training programs that were projected on a large classroom wall and featured colorful, animated cartoon characters delivering the lessons. The children were divided into two groups. One group received music-based, cognitive training that involved a combination of motor, perceptual and cognitive tasks, and included training on rhythm, pitch, melody, voice and basic musical concepts. The other group received visual art training that emphasized the development of visuo-spatial skills relating to concepts such as shape, color, line, dimension and perspective.

Each group received two training sessions of one-hour duration each day in classroom, over four weeks, led by instructors at The Royal Conservatory in Toronto.

Researchers tested the children for verbal and spatial intelligence before and after the training using the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (Third Edition). The team also conducted brain imaging using non-invasive electroecephalography (EEG) which measures the time course of brain activity.

The verbal IQ tests assessed the children’s attention, word recall and ability to analyze information and solve problems using language-based reasoning. Brain imaging enabled researchers to detect if functional brain changes had occurred related to the cognitive training.

When the children were re-tested five to 20 days after the end of the training programs, researchers did not find any significant increase in verbal intelligence or brain changes for the children who participated in the visual art training module. However, they found quite a different result in the children who took the music-based, cognitive training. Ninety percent of those children exhibited intelligence improvements — five times larger than the other group — on a measure of vocabulary knowledge, as well as increased accuracy and reaction time. The music group also showed brain changes that co-related to their enhanced cognitive performance.

“The results of this study strongly affirm the resonance between music and child development, and encourage us to think of music not just as a medium or tool through which treatment might be delivered, but as the treatment itself,” said Dr. Chau, a Senior Scientist at Bloorview Research Institute and Canada Research Chair in Paediatric Rehabilitation Engineering.

The study was supported by a grant from the Ontario Centre of Excellence (to Sylvain Moreno) and a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (to Ellen Bialystok). The scientific team also included research assistants Raluca Barac and Nicholas Cepeda of York University.

The study was published in the journal NeuroImage.

Using a process called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the research team, led by Dr. Vinoo Alluri from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, recorded the brain responses of individuals who were listening to a piece of modern Argentinian tango. Subsequently, using sophisticated computer algorithms, they analyzed the musical content of the tango, showing how its rhythmic, tonal and timbral components evolve over time. This was the first time such a study has been carried out using real music instead of artificially constructed music-like sound stimuli. Comparison of the brain responses and the musical features revealed many interesting things.

The researchers found that music listening recruits not only the auditory areas of the brain, but also employs large-scale neural networks. For instance, they discovered that the processing of musical pulse recruits motor areas in the brain, supporting the idea that music and movement are closely intertwined. Limbic areas of the brain, known to be associated with emotions, were found to be involved in rhythm and tonality processing. Processing of timbre was associated with activations in the so-called default mode network, which is assumed to be associated with mind-wandering and creativity.

“Our results show for the first time how different musical features activate emotional, motor and creative areas of the brain,” says Prof. Petri Toiviainen from the University of Jyväskylä. “We believe that our method provides more reliable knowledge about music processing in the brain than the more conventional methods.”

These findings add to the body of research that supports using music in Early Childhood Education. As educators work to develop children at a young age, music is a powerful tool to help young learners develop a number of different skills. Check out Growing-Sound.com for some great Children’s Music for your young learners.