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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.

 

 

 

"Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song." Psalms 95:2

"Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music." Psalms 98:4