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FEATURED ARTICLE
How Early Music Training Changes the Brain
T. Christina Zhao and Patricia K. Kuhl
Recent decades have witnessed significant advancements in research that aid in our understanding about how the human brain develops the ability to process the dynamic and complex acoustics of music (Loui and Belden, 2019; Russo, 2020). One particular question, Whether having music training early in life can have an impact on the development of the human brain?, has intrigued not only scientists but also parents, educators, and policymakers. As this article demonstrates, we now have a good body of evidence supporting this idea and that the effect of music training may be particularly valuable for young children.
The effect of music training on the brain is a critical sci- entific question to pose from both a theoretical and an application point of view. From the theoretical perspective, studying early music training provides an excellent model for studying neural plasticity in humans, that is, how the brain changes in response to environmental changes (Herholz and Zatorre, 2012). Thanks to advancements in neuroimaging methods (e.g., magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], magneto- [MEG]/electroencephalography [EEG]; see Loui and Belden, 2019, for a brief introduction), we can now examine changes in the brain noninvasively, in both their structure and functions. Several theoretical frameworks have been proposed to guide our investiga- tion as to what and how changes take place in the brain as a result of early music training (Kraus and Chandrasekaran, 2010; Patel, 2014). The majority of this review focuses on the structural and functional changes in the brain related to early music training, both within and beyond the realm of music processing.
From the application perspective, understanding how early music training can affect brain development could have important implications for children with or at risk for clinical diagnoses of communication disorders. For example, converging evidence has shown that early music training can benefit speech processing, raising the ques- tion of whether we can leverage music training in the
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https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2020.16.3.61
future as an alternative treatment approach for develop- mental communication disorders. We review emerging clinical studies focusing on the effects of early music training on children at risk for or with dyslexia. Taken together, this review harnesses considerable evidence suggesting that early music training affects brain devel- opment, and further investigation in this area is needed to enhance both theory and clinical practice.
Defining Early Music Training
To understand the effects stemming from early music training, it is important to first define (1) what should be considered as “early” and (2) what should be consid- ered as music training. The concept of early comes from research showing “critical periods” for general human learning. For example, in language learning, it has been observed repeatedly that the overall ability to acquire a second language starts to decline significantly after 7 years of age, making the period before age 7 critical and early for language learning (Kuhl, 2010). So far, music research has largely adopted the same time frame from language research, and, indeed, interesting parallels have been observed between the time lines for music and language learning (e.g., Hannon and Trehub, 2005a,b; discussed in detail in Music Exposure).
Second, for an experience to be considered as music training, it needs to involve active participation in a musical activity for a prolonged period of time. This is in contrast to two other commonly discussed key concepts: music exposure and music aptitude. Human brains can learn a lot about the surrounding environment without even paying attention to it (i.e., passive exposure), and this ability is much stronger in infants and children than it is in adults. For example, six-month-old infants can learn to differentiate new speech sounds with only two minutes of exposure (Maye et al., 2002). At the same time, there is also great intrinsic variability across individuals in this ability to learn information from passive exposure.
Volume 16, issue 3 | Fall 2020 • Acoustics Today 61