Ever wonder why there is not a superhero with the Power of Music? Seriously. Sure, super strength and the ability to fly come in handy, but the Power of Music can sooth and calm a fussy baby (well, really a person of any age—adults included!), convince a reluctant toddler to clean up toys, help a preschooler discriminate between letter sounds, and even teach a child self-control.
Let’s face it. The Power of Music is a super power, especially when it comes to the cognitive development in children. But, wait, there’s more! Studies even show that the benefits of music extend well beyond childhood. Who needs to leap tall buildings?
Two long-term cognitive benefits of music
Two recent studies on the benefits of music show that music lessons in childhood can protect an adult’s brain from dementia, positively impact memory recall, and help aging adults maintain sound discrimination that supports speech:
- As explained in the Journal of Neuroscience when adults age, many experience challenges in understanding and responding to speech, especially in certain environments, such as restaurants. However, older adults with music training as children do not exhibit neural timing delays. Adult participants with 4 to 14 years of musical training as children had faster response times to speech than those without musical training as children. Most surprisingly, they had not attended music classes in over 40 years!
- Dr. Luis Fornazzari of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto has also studied adult musicians’ memory in relation to dementia. He noticed that older adults who could play music as children did not experience the same level of decay in the discrimination of sounds when compared to non-musicians. “The brain becomes absolutely trained in the discrimination of the sounds, the human voice and the different instruments, the different notes and that lasts,” Fornazzari explained in Learning music early build’s up brain’s reserves. “If the disease [dementia] occurs and you have good brain reserve capacity, you can tolerate the effect of the disease for longer not showing the symptoms until later.”
So, while we may not be able to give our children the Super Power of flight or strength—or even an invisibility cloak for that matter—we can give our children the super power of music! Do you want to bring the power of music to your child and family?