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Music’s Harmony on the

Developing Brain:

Data from the ABCD Study

By Tim Brown, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Neurosciences
Sentia Lab for Childhood Systems Neuroscience many common school skills like naming letters or counting.
Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute We also found the reverse is true: Many kids who are the
University of California, San Diego best at these early academic tasks aren’t as good as many
School of Medicine of their classmates at hitting the right notes when they’re
singing. We’ve also measured children’s abilities to tap to a
John R. Iversen, Ph.D. questions, too. For example, does a child who studies how rhythm, which showed similar results. Taken together, what
to play a musical instrument get better in school because
Associate Research Scientist, Institute for Neural Computation we found suggests that musical abilities at this age might
Associate Director, Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience of music … or do kids who do well in school already also do develop separately from other skills that are commonly
University of California, San Diego John Iversen well at music, or get more chances to take lessons? measured in school.
Our research team has started a project called EARLI (Early
Academic Readiness and Learning Intervention) to explore One lesson from this research is that musical skills can
some of these questions. In this project, funded by the provide a new window into a child’s strengths. This
National Endowment for the Arts and private donations, information could help families and teachers approach
Music is an important part of human culture, and the idea that it’s important for learning has been around we’re seeing if a fun, daily program of group singing each child from a place where they’re already strong to
at least since ancient times. Confucius and Socrates wrote that music training contributes to a refined mind and lessons—developed by an experienced teacher from the help improve other skills. To go along with our EARLI study,
harmonious society. Now, researchers are looking at how music might help kids learn. San Diego Children’s Choir—helps young children do we’re also taking a deep dive into what the ABCD Study has
better as they enter kindergarten. found out; in fact, music is the most frequently reported
Encouraging children to reach their full potential, while celebrating individual differences, is complicated. Researchers arts activity in the ABCD Study. With a grant funded by
approach this challenge in many ways—from small studies that test the effects of a particular music training program on We first worked with kids to get an idea of how each one’s the National Institutes of Health, we’re also exploring
children’s abilities to think and do different tasks, to very large studies like the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study skills were already developing in areas like language, math, connections between how much music experience
(ABCD Study). The ABCD Study is examining connections between a child’s experiences with music and their other abilities attention, hearing, melody, and rhythm. Then, some of the each child has; measures such as math performance,
and outcomes. children began taking a half hour singing lesson four times language, and memory; and changes in the child’s brain
a week for two months. After that, we repeated our initial
Past research has suggested that music might improve a child’s language skills and their ability to pay attention, and that structure over a period of time. By combining the ABCD
kids involved in music might come to school more often and stick with school longer. But this research has raised a lot of research to see if the music training changed the path of Study’s results with very detailed studies like EARLI, we’re
each child’s development (for example, did it speed up?). continuing to learn about how music may affect—and
It was important to check if it was really the music that improve—children’s health and education.
had any effect, so we also worked with children who did
not get the music training. We did this research in schools
Better
and involved the children’s teachers, families, and school
administrators, in order to get “the big picture” about the
children’s learning.
Vocabulary
Score So far, we’ve focused on one question: Does a child’s
musical abilities match their academic skills like reading
and math? Previous research has shown that children who
Children with
low vocabulary and do well on one kind of school skill, like naming letters, also
excellent singing tend to be good at other school skills, like counting—even
though those skills may seem pretty different. Do early
Better developing musical abilities act this way, too?
Tim Brown Singing
Score Our results suggest that they don’t. Using a task that
requires kids to sing the same notes they hear from a music
Vocabulary and singing scores for students in the EARLI study teacher, we found that some of the very best singers at pre- In-school singing training in a transitional kindergarten class.
(each dot is the score for one student). kindergarten ages don’t do as well as their classmates at