"Our findings indicate that enhanced responses to musical stimuli can be expressed at a very early age," says Larry Roberts, PhD, a professor at McMaster University. But this doesn't necessarily mean that genetic or prenatal factors are the cause of the response, he adds. Such responses are known to be neuroplastic -- in other words, people, even nonmusical ones, can be trained to develop them.
"Most of the children that we observed with an enhanced brain response to music came from homes where their parents or sibling played a musical instrument, so that they had heard a lot of music before they began playing an instrument themselves," Roberts says. "Their early exposure to music in the home may have been responsible for the enhanced responses we observed in their brains."
For their study, the researchers enlisted seven 4- and 5-year-old children who were enrolled in Suzuki music training. Six of the children received training in piano and one on the violin. Before the music lessons began and again a year later, after each child's first recital, the researchers measured the children for a brain response known as the P2 auditory evoked potential, which is detected in brain waves recorded from sensors placed on the scalp. Neurons that generate the P2 response are located in a region of the auditory cortex known as the secondary auditory cortex, and are activated about 0.15 seconds after acoustic signals have reached the brain.
Previous research has shown that P2 brain responses evoked by musical tones are enhanced in adult professional musicians and in adult amateur musicians who play an instrument for personal enjoyment. The study is the first one to examine these brain responses in children receiving musical training.
"We found that P2 brain responses evoked by piano tones
'"/>
Contact: Dawn McCoy
dawn@sfn.org
202-462-6688
Society for Neuroscience
10-Nov-2003