6,440,000. That's how many results you get when you do a Google search on "music and brain development." Certainly there's no shortage of information backing up the idea that our brains and music are as compatible as Adam and Eve or Romeo and Juliet. The fact is: our brains love music. Our brains thrive on music. Our brains physiologically change in response to music. In Dr. Oliver Sacks' book, Musicophilia, he states: "Anatomists would be hard put to identify the brain of a visual artist, a writer, or a mathematician - but they could recognize the brain of a professional musician without a moment's hesitation." Dr. Michael Thaut writes in his book, Rhythm, Music, and the Brain, "The brain that engages in music is changed by this engagement."

Follow up:

Despite the disappointing research findings that the infamous "Mozart Effect" was just a bunch of hype (sorry to all of you that bought Mozart thinking it would make your children smarter), brain imaging techniques such as MEGs and EEGs continue to prove music's amazing neurological effects. Additionally, research continues to pour in proving that music training in education carries over into other non-musical academic skills such as literacy, memory, attention, verbal memory, math, spatial processing, and, yes, overall IQ. Additionally, music is proving to have significant effects in neurorehabilitation. Why? One word: neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is our brains' ability to adaptively and physiologically change in response to the environment. For example, research has shown that the corpus callosum (our brain's "bridge" connecting the right and left hemispheres) is significantly larger ... almost like a superhighway ... in musicians as compared to non-musicians. Music organizes our brains - it's repetitive, patterned, structured, predictable, resolving, and temporal - it enables our brains to work more efficiently and effectively.

So what are the practical applications of these findings? The number could compete with the Google results of "music and brain development." But generally speaking, the implications are significant for both education and therapy. Our educational systems seem to be selective when choosing the "best practices" for our children. Despite the research showing music to be foundational to learning, music is often the first to go when the budget belt needs to be tightened. Not only does music training in schools provide students with educational advantages as mentioned before, it also "pulls in" those students for whom academics are difficult, keeping students engaged in learning and providing for them areas of emotional outlet, expression and success.

Therapeutically, neuroscience is just discovering the tip of the iceberg. The love and respect our brains have for music results in stroke survivors being able to verbally communicate again and patients with Parkinson's Disease being able to walk with a normalized gait. Music provides children with sensory integration disorders the platform to become organized as they listen and rhythmically move while feeling the tactile feedback from a hand drum or a child with Cerebral Palsy being able to extend his range of motion and feel some power over his movements because of rhythm's effect on his motor cortex.

Music and brain development is not something that happens within the first five years of life. Music and brain development continues throughout our lives. It's there guiding us, relaxing us, energizing us, organizing us, and yes, for those of you with teenagers, even irritating us. The bottom line is: our brains love music. And music responds.

Written by Paula Scicluna, MA, MT-BC, NMT-F | Board Certified Neurologic Music Therapist
Director, Rhythm & Rehab, LLC
Neurologic Music Therapy Services