sfgate.com — Stanford University research has found for the first time that musical training improves how the brain processes the spoken word, a finding that researchers say could lead to improving the reading ability of children who have dyslexia and other reading problems.
Nov 18, 2005 View in Crawl 4
dkleinschmidtNov 18, 2005
The article is about the effects of learning to play a musical instrument early, and continuing to play and practice it into adulthood, not just listening to music. Also, there's only a very specific and limited benefit that this study reveals: that musicians are better able to hear very small differences in the sound of speech.
wlloyddaNov 18, 2005
Brain researchers at UCI discovered this at least 10 years ago. They found that the brain was growing until about 8-10yro but that it died off unless "something" was done to make it permanent. That "something" was either learn a foreign language or learn to play a musical instrument. So both of my kids learned Spanish and how to play the piano, trombone, guitar, and clarinet.They also discovered that excessive video watching miswires the brain permanently (read brain-damaged).
aeiouNov 18, 2005
First time? We've known for a long time that musicians are generally smarter than non musicians.
rockonreddogNov 18, 2005
sooo....because i'm a guitarist and i work in the music industry.....my brain must be insanely awesome!!!