Music trains the nervous system and improves learning ability

Thursday, July 22, 2010 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: music, learning, health news

(NaturalNews) Researchers from Northwestern University recently published a series of data in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, revealing that music plays an important role in nervous system development. According to various, diverse scientific literature, musical training improves the brain's overall ability to learn new things.

After poring through data from numerous labs and research centers around the world, Nina Kraus, lead author of the report, and her team, came to realize how valuable music is in enhancing learning ability.

"The brain is unable to process all of the available sensory information from second to second, and thus must selectively enhance what is relevant. Playing an instrument primes the brain to choose what is relevant in a complex process that may involve reading or remembering a score, timing issues and coordination with other musicians," she explained.

In other words, musical training helps to develop the foundation for thinking by which cognitive function is able to improve throughout a person's lifetime.

"Science has studied the effects on humans of various kinds of sound, and the consensus is that the right sort of music definitely has a beneficial effect on our state of health," explains Alfred Vogel in his book The Nature Doctor: A Manual of Traditional and Complementary Medicine.

The data also revealed that children who receive musical training are more adept at interpreting pitch changes in speech, and they generally have a better vocabulary and reading ability than children who receive no musical training.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-...

http://www.naturalpedia.com/Music-19.html