Brain on Music Education 110: Don�t Stop the Music! More Evidence for the Lifelong Benefits of Music Training Early in Life

Happy New Year! Hope the Holidays were full of your favorite music.

It is great to be back with our tenth column. This will be the second time we highlight research done in Dr. Kraus�s lab at Northwestern University.� New research from this lab has found that the benefits of music training early in life could be seen even 40 years after training had ceased. The participants (55-76 years old) were better able to detect and distinguish specific sound sequences from different listening environments compared to a control group without early music training.

Some of this might sound familiar. Column 106 also highlighted work from Dr. Kraus�s research.²� That study focused on participants 18-31 years of age, who had received formal music training about 5 years earlier. The research approach used in column 106 was very similar to that in this month�s column. Hopefully, it will make digesting everything a little easier.

Let�s begin with some background on the brainstem and the study�s main measurement, auditory brainstem responses.

First, the brainstem; you may recall the image below from previous columns:

Let�s look at auditory brainstem responses a little more closely and how they were used.

Dr. Kraus�s team measured the latency period between playing the [da] sound and the appearance of the associated ABR in three groups of adults based on the years of music training received early in life: One group had received none. The second group (�Little�) had received 1-3 years of instruction (roughly equivalent to what is included in many middle and junior high schools). The third group (�Moderate�) had received 4-14 years of music training.

None of the participants (aged 55-76) in the Little or Moderate groups had reported any practice, performance or instruction after their, on average, 25th Birthday. The measurements were taken about 40 years after they had last played their instrument.

The ratio of males to females, ages, hearing ability and IQ were comparable between the 3 groups. These similarities are important. The researchers were careful to balance these and other factors. They wanted to make certain that any differences in ABRs were due to differences in what was occurring in the brain stem.

The researchers found that the time delay (the latency) between playing the [da] sound and appearance of the ABR was smallest (the smaller the better) in the Moderate group (4-14 years of music training). This was observed whether when the [da] sound was played alone or in the presence of a 2-talker babble track. When the researchers looked even closer, the differences between groups could be narrowed down to the transition from the [d] sound to the [a] sound in [da]. This is also called the consonant-vowel transition �something very familiar to the researchers in this field.

What do the results mean? The results are pretty remarkable. They show that the benefits of music training early in life continued to be found even 40 years after the music training had ceased. Dr. Kraus� previous study in 18-31 years olds², who had received formal music training an average of 5 years earlier, found that the size (amplitude) of the ABRs over the brainstem in response to a complex sound sequence were larger than those in participants, who had not received any music instruction.

These scientific findings raise the question: what occurs in the brain that maintains these benefits despite the ceasing of music training? We can only speculate. One explanation is that the initial changes early in life following music training predispose the brain to make other changes in sound processing (e.g. speech perception). Does early music training also confer students with better overall learning skills and performance in other subjects? We eagerly await more insights from Dr. Kraus�s research.

We hope that you�ll be able to use these results to keep the music programs in your school strong and vibrant.

Please keep the questions coming on Facebook. We�ll be back again soon.

Reference:

1. White-Schwoch T, Woodruff Carr K, Anderson S, Strait, D, Kraus N. Older Adults Benefit from Music Training Early in Life: Biological Evidence for Long-Term Training-Driven Plasticity. J Neurosci 2013, 33(45):17667�17674.

2. Skoe E and Kraus N. A little goes a Long Way: How the Adult Brain Is Shaped by Musical Training in Childhood. J Neurosci 2012;32(44):11507-11510.