Music Lessons May Open the Mind to Math and Science

Source:  Unknown

Parents take heart.  If weekly music lessons show no sign of turning your kid into a young Leonard Bernstein, they could be stoking the talents of a future Marie Curie or Galileo. 

Just 15 minutes a week of private keyboard instruction, along with group singing at preschool, dramatically improved a kind of intelligence needed for high-level math and science, suggests a new study.

Music lessons appear to strengthen the links between brain neurons and build new spatial reasoning, says psychologist Frances Rauscher of University of California-Irvine.

“Music instruction can improve a child’s spatial intelligence for long periods of time – perhaps permanently,”  Rauscher told the American Psychological Association meeting here.

Her study compared 19 pre-schoolers who took the lessons and 14 classmates enrolled in no special music programs.  After eight months, she found:

-          A 46% boost in spatial IQ’s for the young musicians

-          6% improvement for children not taught music.

“If parents can’t afford lessons, they should at least buy a musical keyboard….or sing regularly with their kids and involve them in musical activities,”  Rauscher says.

She’s next going to test grade-schoolers.  “If we can show it enhances spatial IQ in primary kids, this is a very powerful method to assure that every child reaches his or her potential in math and science,” Rauscher says.