Music has been a part of our culture since time immemorial. It has been a major source of entertaind learning that has enlightened mankind since ancient times.
But apart from entertainment, music has some other benefits too, which are seldom recognised. One such important benefit of music is that it helps in the progressive development of the child.
Kids and music
We introduce kids to music at a very early age by singing lullabies to pacify them. As kids grow, they become more accustomed to music and start responding to different rhythms and notes, which results in the enhancements of their power to understand and grasp.
The best example of this is that the nursery rhymes are recited to children in the form of songs and proses and some of which are etched in their minds forever.
The scientific explanation
The human brain is divided into four parts – frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe and temporal lobe. The neural impulses in the ear, the information travels to the midbrain surpassing various stations in the brainstem and reaches the auditory cortex.
The auditory cortex then transmits the information to all the four segments of the brain. The sound of music enables the frontal lobe of the brain to interpret the information and change it into memories. This helps the orbital frontal emotional evaluation.
The study
A study conducted on the children between the age of 10 and 11 years compared music syntactic processing and neural correlates of language. The comparison was made between kids who were exposed to music and those who were not.
Result
The study found that the neurophysiological correlates of music and the linguistic syntactic processing as better perceived and developed in kids who received musical training for a longer time. Music also influenced the much more complex processing mechanism of the cognitive domain of language.
All this establishes a very direct connection between the development of the kid’s brain and the progressive effect music can have on it.
Let the music play!
