Scientists reveal that music, while being a form of entertainment for most people, is something much more for those who actually play a musical instrument, or who otherwise create music. This is especially true for children who play in school orchestra, bands, or who have been practicing a certain instrument since they were small. A recent study has revealed the fact that this type of training can be used as an indicator for mental abilities later on in life, LiveScience reports. The find was presented at a meeting of acoustics experts, recently held in Austin, Texas. “We (...) hypothesize that musical training (but not necessarily passive listening to music) affects attention and memory, which provides a mechanism whereby musical training might lead to better learning across a number of domains,” McMaster University Institute for Music and the Mind director Laurel Trainor says. The new study was conducted on preschool children, some of who had taken music lessons while they were small, while the others hadn't. The experts then ran sound recognition tests for all the children, and determined that the ones in the former showed a better brain response to the stimuli than members of the latter.
In other words, the expert says, it would appear that musical training has the ability to physically influenc... (read more)
