PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Musical training offsets some academic achievement gaps, research says

Music students have improved neural function, learning abilities over time

2014-08-08
(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON -- Learning to play a musical instrument or to sing can help disadvantaged children strengthen their reading and language skills, according to research presented at the American Psychological Association's 122nd Annual Convention.

The findings, which involved hundreds of kids participating in musical training programs in Chicago and Los Angeles public schools, highlight the role learning music can have on the brains of youth in impoverished areas, according to presenter Nina Kraus, PhD, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University.

"Research has shown that there are differences in the brains of children raised in impoverished environments that affect their ability to learn," said Kraus. "While more affluent students do better in school than children from lower income backgrounds, we are finding that musical training can alter the nervous system to create a better learner and help offset this academic gap." Up until now, research on the impact of musical training has been primarily conducted on middle- to upper-income music students participating in private music lessons, she said.

Kraus's lab research has concluded that musical training appears to enhance the way children's nervous systems process sounds in a busy environment, such as a classroom or a playground. This improved neural function may lead to enhanced memory and attention spans which, in turn, allow kids to focus better in the classroom and improve their communication skills, she said.

Many of Kraus's study participants are part of the Harmony Project in Los Angeles, which was founded by fellow presenter Margaret Martin, PhD. In her most recent research, Kraus studied children beginning when they were in first and second grade. Half participated in musical training and the other half were randomly selected from the program's lengthy waiting list and received no musical training during the first year of the study. Children who had no musical training had diminished reading scores while Harmony Project participants' reading scores remained unchanged over the same time span.

Kraus's lab also found that, after two years, neural responses to sound in adolescent music students were faster and more precise than in students in another type of enrichment class. The researchers tested the auditory abilities in adolescents from lower economic backgrounds at three public high schools in Chicago. Over two years, half of the students participated in either band or choir during each school day while the other half were enrolled in Junior Reserve Officer's Training Corps classes, which teaches character education, achievement, wellness, leadership and diversity. All participants had comparable reading ability and IQs at the start of the study. The researchers recorded the children's brain waves as they listened to a repeated syllable against soft background sound, which made it harder for the brain to process. The researchers repeated measures after one year and again at the two-year mark. They found music students' neural responses had strengthened while the JROTC students' responses had remained the same. Interestingly, the differences in the music students' brain waves in response to sounds as described above occurred after two years but not at one year, which showed that these programs cannot be used as quick fixes, Kraus said. This is the strongest evidence to date that public school music education in lower-income students can lead to better sound processing in the brain when compared to other types of enrichment education, she added.

Even after the lessons stop, the brain still reaps benefits, according to studies on the long-term benefits of music lessons. In one study, Kraus's team surveyed college students and asked them how many years they had music training. As they found with the elementary school students, college students who had more than five years of musical training in elementary school or high school had improved neural responses to sound when compared to college students who had had no musical training.

The Harmony Project provides instruments for the students who participate five or more hours a week in musical instruction and ensemble rehearsals. The project is year-round and tuition-free based on income, said Martin. Many of the programs build full-time bands in neighborhoods where the students live and the students agree to commit to the program from elementary school through high school, she said.

"We're spending millions of dollars on drugs to help kids focus and here we have a non-pharmacologic intervention that thousands of disadvantaged kids devote themselves to in their non-school hours -- that works," Martin said. "Learning to make music appears to remodel our kids' brains in ways that facilitates and improves their ability to learn."

The Harmony Project has launched programs in other urban school districts, including Miami, New Orleans, Tulsa, Kansas City, Missouri and Ventura, California.

INFORMATION: Session 2147: "Biological, Behavioral and Academic Impact of Musical Training in At-Risk Children," Symposium, Friday, Aug. 8, 10 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. EDT, Room 147B, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mount Vernon Pl., NW, Washington, D.C.

Presentations are available from the APA Public Affairs Office.

Contact Nina Kraus
nkraus@northwestern.edu
Phone (847) 491-3181 (office) or (847) 602-6052 (cell) Margaret Martin
margaret@harmony-project.org
Phone (323) 462-4311 (office) or (310) 499-8178 (cell)

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA's membership includes nearly 130,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Disney Research leads development of tool to design inflatable characters and structures

2014-08-08
The air pressure that makes inflatable parade floats, foil balloons and even inflatable buildings easy to deploy and cost effective can be challenging to designers of those same inflatables due to limitations in today's fabrication process, but a new interactive computational tool enables even non-experts to create intricate inflatable structures. Developed by a team from Disney Research Zurich, ETH Zurich and Columbia University, the method reverse-engineers the physics of inflation as the designer sketches the shape of the structure and the placement of seams. As a ...

Disney Research process designs tops and yo-yos with stable spins despite asymmetric shapes

2014-08-08
Tops and yo-yos are among the oldest types of playthings but researchers at Disney Research Zurich and ETH Zurich have given them a new spin with an algorithm that makes it easier to design these toys so that they have asymmetric shapes. The algorithm can take a 3D model of an object and, within less than a minute, calculate how mass can be distributed within the object to enable a stable spin around a desired axis. Sometimes, adding voids within the object is sufficient to provide stability; in other cases, the object's shape might need to be altered a bit or a heavier ...

Disney Researchers develop 'feel effect' vocabulary to tell stories with sense of touch

2014-08-08
Sound effects and visual effects have long been standard tools for entertaining audiences, but even as storytellers increasingly turn to haptic feedback to engage the sense of touch in games, theme park rides and movies, they have lacked a common vocabulary to describe or access these "feel effects." Researchers at Disney Research Pittsburgh are beginning to fill that gap. In a study to be presented at the ACM Symposium on Applied Perception, Aug. 8-9, in Vancouver, Canada, Disney researchers worked with human participants and a Carnegie Mellon University psychologist ...

Disney Researchers develop method to capture stylized hair for 3D-printed figurines

2014-08-08
Perhaps no aspect of 3D printing has captured the popular imagination more than personalized figurines with the facial features of real people. Now, researchers at Disney Research Zurich and the University of Zaragoza have developed a method that can incorporate an individual's hairstyle as well. The researchers will present their new method at ACM SIGGRAPH 2014, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Vancouver, Aug. 10-14. Miniature statues with a person's likeness are nowadays produced by scanning the individual's face with ...

Do women and men ride differently?

Do women and men ride differently?
2014-08-08
For centuries, horse riding was largely restricted to males. The previous situation is in stark contrast to the present day, when nearly 80 percent of riders are women. Modern-day equestrian sports are unique in that men and women compete directly against one another at all levels, from beginners in gymkhanas to national champions in the Olympic Games. "For this reason it is interesting to consider whether a theory of riding that was developed exclusively for men can be applied to women," explains Natascha Ille, the first author of the recent publication. A rider is ...

The immediate aftermath of an oil spill

2014-08-08
The immediate aftermath of an oil spill The fate of oil during the first day after an accidental oil spill is still poorly understood, with researchers often arriving on the scene only after several days. New findings from a field experiment carried out in the North Sea provide valuable insight that could help shape the emergency response in the immediate wake of disasters. It is well known that oil and water don't mix. Less well known is the fact that when petroleum is spilt onto a water surface, a fraction of the oil immediately begins to evaporate into the air or ...

Wiggly microRNA binding implies a more complex genome regulation

2014-08-08
(PHILDELPHIA) – MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate protein-coding gene abundance levels by interacting with the 3´ end of various messenger RNAs. Each target site matches the first few nucleotides of the targeting miRNA, the so called "seed" region, and this interaction leads to the degradation of the target or prevents its translation into amino acids. This dogma has led researchers to largely look for perfect base-pair matching of the "seed" region among candidate targets. New research published today (August 8th) in Nature's open access journal Scientific Reports suggests ...

Scientists unravel mystery of brain cell growth

Scientists unravel mystery of brain cell growth
2014-08-08
In the developing brain, special proteins that act like molecular tugboats push or pull on growing nerve cells, or neurons, helping them navigate to their assigned places amidst the brain's wiring. How a single protein can exert both a push and a pull force to nudge a neuron in the desired direction is a longstanding mystery that has now been solved by scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and collaborators in Europe and China. Jia-huai Wang, PhD, who led the work at Dana-Farber and Peking University in Beijing, is a corresponding author of a report published ...

Microtubule-based strategies for promoting nerve regeneration after injury

Microtubule-based strategies for promoting nerve regeneration after injury
2014-08-08
After injury, damaged axons have the capacity to regenerate, but the regenerative capacity of the axon, particularly axons of the central nervous system, is quite limited. This is because the damaged axons tend to retract, because they encounter obstacles such as scar tissue and inhibitory molecules, and because their growth rates simply do not match those of a juvenile axon. Prof. Peter W. Baas from Drexel University, USA focus on microtubules as among the most important factors in encouraging injured adult axons to regenerate. Microtubules are hollow polymeric filaments ...

Role of Notch-1 signaling pathway in PC12 cell apoptosis induced by amyloid beta-peptide (25-35)

2014-08-08
Recent studies have demonstrated that Notch-1 expression is increased in the hippocampus of Alzheimer's disease patients. Huimin Liang and co-workers from Second Affliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, China speculate that Notch-1 signaling may be involved in PC12 cell apoptosis induced by amyloid beta-peptide (25-35) (Aβ25-35). In a study reported on the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 13, 2014), PC12 cells were cultured with different doses (0, 0.1, 1.0, 10 and 100 nmol/L) of N-[N-(3,5-Difuorophen-acetyl)-L-alanyl]-S-phenylglycine t-butyl ester, a Notch-1 ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Real-world data shows teclistamab can benefit many multiple myeloma patients who would have been ineligible for pivotal trial

Scientists reveal how a key inflammatory molecule triggers esophageal muscle contraction

Duration of heat waves accelerating faster than global warming

New mathematical insights into Lagrangian turbulence

Clinical trials reveal promising alternatives to high-toxicity tuberculosis drug

Artificial solar eclipses in space could shed light on Sun

Probing the cosmic Dark Ages from the far side of the Moon

UK hopes to bolster space weather forecasts with Europe's first solar storm monitor

Can one video change a teen's mindset? New study says yes - but there’s a catch

How lakes connect to groundwater critical for resilience to climate change, research finds

Youngest basaltic lunar meteorite fills nearly one billion-year gap in Moon’s volcanic history

Cal Poly Chemistry professor among three U.S. faculty to be honored for contributions to chemistry instruction

Stoichiometric crystal shows promise in quantum memory

Study sheds light on why some prostate tumors are resistant to treatment

Tree pollen reveals 150,000 years of monsoon history—and a warning for Australia’s northern rainfall

Best skin care ingredients revealed in thorough, national review

MicroRNA is awarded an Impact Factor Ranking for 2024

From COVID to cancer, new at-home test spots disease with startling accuracy

Now accepting submissions: Special Collection on Cognitive Aging

Young adult literature is not as young as it used to be

Can ChatGPT actually “see” red? New results of Google-funded study are nuanced

Turning quantum bottlenecks into breakthroughs

Cancer-fighting herpes virus shown to be an effective treatment for some advanced melanoma

Eliminating invasive rats may restore the flow of nutrients across food chain networks in Seychelles

World’s first: Lithuanian scientists’ discovery may transform OLED technology and explosives detection

Rice researchers develop superstrong, eco-friendly materials from bacteria

Itani studying translation potential of secure & efficient software updates in industrial internet of things architectures

Elucidating the source process of the 2021 south sandwich islands tsunami earthquake

Zhu studying use of big data in verification of route choice models

Common autoimmune drug may help reverse immunotherapy-induced diabetes, UCLA study finds

[Press-News.org] Musical training offsets some academic achievement gaps, research says
Music students have improved neural function, learning abilities over time