Playing an Instrument Benefits your brain!

Happy New Year and welcome back to school time! It’s been some time since I have shared information about the benefits of music. Here is an interesting TED talk about how playing an instrument benefits your students’ brains. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0JKCYZ8hng

Music learning can impact on general brain development in children and adults. In the research it is called music training and is generally understood to be the formal and sequential learning of music, through playing music as well as appreciating and listening to it.

Research into the nature of how the corpus callosum impacts on the brain’s functions, and how learning a musical instrument impacts on this, is ongoing. Recently, neuroscientists have dug deeper and found that changes in the corpus callosum may be dependent on the type of musical training a musician does and could be localized to the anterior corpus callosum. This area has shown an increase in bi-manual coordination (where the brain coordinates simultaneous multiple movements like using a knife and fork). Here is some of the latest research.

Here is a video about how music education can enhance brain development.

I hope this brings some more insight and excites you for all the brain developments happening during the rest of the year!