Music and Language
March 15, 2007 by Kerri Aldrich
Filed under General Play Library Goodies, News and Links about Children's Things
I’ve recently starting thinking about getting my daughter started in piano lessons, or some other type of music lessons. I took several years of piano as a kid (never dedicated enough to it), and several more years of clarinet. Though I thought I might someday do something with all those years of practicing, the only musical thing I play at all anymore is Bald Man’s iPod! 
According to a new study out of Northwestern University, all those years of lessons were not in vain. My sister (a musician herself) pointed me to this article at Northwestern’s website sharing the results of the study.
From the article:
The study, which will appear in the April issue of Nature Neuroscience, is the first to provide concrete evidence that playing a musical instrument significantly enhances the brainstem’s sensitivity to speech sounds. This finding has broad implications because it applies to sound encoding skills involved not only in music but also in language.
The findings indicate that experience with music at a young age in effect can “fine-tune” the brain’s auditory system. “Increasing music experience appears to benefit all children — whether musically exceptional or not — in a wide range of learning activities,” says Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory and senior author of the study.
So, the next time your kid is looking for something to play, maybe it’ll be time to start him or her playing an instrument. And with all of those years of lessons refining my auditory abilities, maybe I still have a fighting chance of learning Urdu with Hsien. 
Do your children play instruments? How early an age did you start them?
