The impact of music training on child brain and cognitive development

It is an exciting time for developmental science as large-scale studies are charting the growth curves of brain and behavioral development to describe how individual differences in brain development may relate to cognitive development and achievement. Complementary, targeted experimental intervention studies attempt to discover ‘what are the levers by which we can optimally influence development.’ Music is a powerful candidate lever and we will discuss three ongoing studies to assess the impact of music on brain and cognitive development. The EARLI study tests the impact of in-classroom singing lessons on academic performance in pre-kinder children. While many academic skills correlate with sociodemographics, we found that singing abilities did not, suggesting music may serve as an alternative strength that can potentially be used as a lever. Two other projects, SIMPHONY and ABCD+M, have leveraged large-scale neurodevelopmental studies by enriching their music phenotypes. SIMPHONY, a five-year longitudinal study of ~200 elementary-aged children, suggests children learning music have improved processing of language sounds mediated by rhythm skills, providing support for theories of music impact through auditory processing precision. Individual differences in rhythmic perception and production are predicted by motor and premotor cortex structure, supporting theories of a motor role in perception. ABCD+M is an ongoing study of data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study a 10-year longitudinal study of over 11,000 adolescents. Music training is highly represented in the study population, and we are exploring differences in cognitive scores and brain function between music training and other activities.