Classical Music for Baby's Brain Development

A S I A N C O L L E G E O F T E C HNO L O G Y O N C L A S S I C A L M US I C F O R B A B Y B R A I N D E V E L O P M E NT

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Links between music and other forms of human intelligence extend back to the classical discoveries of Pythagoras. But until recently, researchers have demonstrated only correlations between music cognition and spatial reasoning2 (Hassler, Birbaumer and Feil, 1985; Allman, 1976). A structured neuronal model of the cortex (Leng and Shaw, 1991; Leng, Shaw and Wright, 1990) inspired us to test the hypothesis that music and spatial task performance are causally related. This model proposes that musical activity and other higher cognitive functions share inherent neural firing patterns organized in a highly structured spatial-temporal code over large regions of the cortex.

Thus, the authors predicted that the music spatial causal relationship is due to the cultivation of pattern development by groups of neurons brought about by musical operations (Leng and Shaw, 1991).

The above arguments led us to test the following hypothesis: Music, which is universally appreciated from birth, can be used to develop these inherent firing patterns, along with associated behaviors which are relevant to spatial reasoning.

Although prior research has shown that listening to music can provide only a short-term spatial facilitation (Rauscher, Shaw and Ky, 1993), we expect that studying music will provide a longerterm facilitation, particularly for very young children in whom the cortex is still maturing.

Frances Rauscher Researcher Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (CNLM)

CLASSICAL M USIC FOR BABY BRAIN DEVELOPMENT What Can Classical Music Do for Babies?

T here are many reasons to choose classical music

for babies to listen to. The benefits such melodies can have on infants are many.

Unlike many kinds of music, classical songs have a calming effect upon the human mind and body.

The structure and slow tunes relax the mind and, according to some studies, the heart. This can help babies sleep and improve their mental health. Babies that have a hard time sleeping and those that have suffered emotional trauma can benefit most from music. There’s a strong correlation between music and language development.

Young children that listen to classical music might learn to talk and to read faster. They may also develop better memories and listening skills, which are

vital to learning language. One the most interesting attributes of classical music is its ability to affect and improve mental health. A study by the American Music Therapy Association showed that listening to classical rhythms stimulated the production of endorphins or natural relaxants in the brain. This improves the mood and relaxes the body. This calming effect can lead to improved mental health and increased learning abilities.

The best known and most controversial benefit from classical music for babies is the Mozart Effect. The term comes from an experiment that showed listening to classical music can temporarily boost IQs and increase spatial temporal reasoning abilities.

French researcher Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis, who coined the term, believed that classical music encouraged development of the brain. Some researchers believe listening to classical music encour-

ages mental developments, while others do not. Even though the Mozart Effect may not be real, the many benefits show that classical music is good for babies.

Did You Know?

Classical Music was created by an artist with an intellectual purpose in mind.

Much of the early music was generated to serve the Church and to glorify God.

Scaled scores of music and no-music groups on the Object Assembly task versus the other four tasks combined.

Source: Music and Spatial Task Performance: A Causal Relationship

The Object Assembly scores of the children who received eight months of music lessons were significantly higher than the scores of the children who did not (14.0 and 10.4, respectively). The combined means for the other four tasks did not differ across the music and no-music groups (10.4 and 11.02, respectively).

C LASSIC A L M U SIC F O R BABY BR AIN D E V E LO P M EN T

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How does Classical Music Affect the Brain

A

ccording to the Centre for Music Learning at the University of Texas at Austin, infants can categorize auditory stimuli, such as recognizing that two or more stimuli are different; their research showed infants at seven months could discriminate timbre and melody and could recognize a melody when played on a single instrument.

Singing is an ideal way to foster language development, and the exploration of words and rhymes through a familiar tune enhances memory.

An infant’s brain is not fully developed at birth, and he needs sensory input for the cells to build and connect. Music provides an auditory means of stimulation that can also carry educational concepts, such as language, which will develop as an infant obtains cognitive skills.

For all the effects music is thought to have on the brain, classical music seems to fall in a gray area. One side seems to think it makes children smarter, while others file this notion under the psychological myths we fall for. A new Finnish study

An what age, does Classical Music prove to be most effective?

A

ccording to ZerotoThree.org, the first three years of a child’s life are the most crucial for brain development.

While a newborn’s brain is only 25 percent of its adult weight, by age 3, it grows dramatically and builds pathways and connections, called synapses, between its numerous cells.

According to Dr. Diane Bales, Ph.D., author of "Building Baby's Brain: The Role of Music," the synapses used for classical music are similar to those used for spatial and temporal reasoning, which are skills needed for math. Just listening to classical music can “turn on” the synapses.

Ever

played classical

Is Classical Music Really Effective? music while you were pregnant or while the baby was growing up in the hopes that he will grow up brainy? He could grow up as someone who appreciates classical music, but it alone won't make him a genius.

In the early 90s, people

aims to clarify this classic connection.

“Although brain imaging studies have demonstrated that listening to music alters human brain structure and function, the molecular mechanisms mediating those effects remain unknown,” researchers wrote.

“With the advent of genomics and bioinformatics approaches, These effects of music can now be studied in a more detailed fashion.” Case and point: Researchers performed genomewide transcriptional profiling from the peripheral blood of participants after they listened to classical music — and again without music exposure. In layman’s terms, researchers studied music’s effects on a molecular level, something they cited prior research hasn’t done before.

They had one group of participants listen to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Conce to No. 3 in G major, K.216 for 20 minutes, and another didn’t listen to any music.

Instead, they were advised to avoid listening to music the day before the study and spent their session either talking to other participants, reading a magazine, or walking outside. The results showed listening to classical music enhanced activity of genes

G R AD E 10 – PE R SEV ER AN C E

before the study and spent their session either talking to other participants, reading a magazine, or walking outside. The results showed listening to classical music enhanced activity of genes Involved in dopamine secretion (the feel good hormone), and “transport synaptic function, learning and memory.” One of the most up-regulated genes was synucleinalpha (SNCA), which is a known risk gene for Parkinson’s disease. This gene is also how songbirds learn songs.

"The up-regulation of several genes that are known to be responsible for song learning and singing in songbirds suggest a shared evolutionary background of sound perception between vocalizing birds and humans," Dr. Irma Järvelä, lead study author, said in a press release. While classical music worked to regulate some genes, it “downregulated” others associated with neurodegeneration — the process of neurons losing their structure or function — “suggesting the importance of familiarity and experience in mediating musicinduced effects.”

Music therapy continues to be an area of scientific interest. Prior research has shown hip-hop lyrics offer individuals suffering from cognitive illnesses a fresh way of thinking, while creating, singing, moving, and/or listening to music reduced symptoms in depressed children and adolescents.

believed playing classical music would make a baby smart, thanks to a study that found a group of college students, who listened to Mozart’s "Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major," faring better in a spatial IQ test compared to when they didn’t.

The study, which was published in Nature magazine in 1993, was conducted by researchers Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky of the Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory in the University of California in the United States. They studied 36 college students from the university and asked them to perform spatial temporal tasks after listening to 10 minutes each of Mozart’s sonata, a relaxation tape, and silence. Afterwards, the group was given a test to measure spatial IQ (like recognizing patterns or folding paper), and after listening to Mozart, they scored an average of 8 to 9 IQ points higher than after 10 minutes of silence. But more interesting is the fact that the cognitive gains lasted only about 10 to 15 minutes.

over the world.

Since then, several studies have sought to debunk the prevailing theory (in 2010, researchers at the University of Vienna found no evidence that listening to Mozart’s music enhanced cognitive abilities in any way). But up to this day, a lot of people still think playing classical music, or even any other music that you enjoy will make you or your babies more intelligent.

Of course, we don't want to dismiss music of any kind. Research has shown a link between music and the stimulation of the neurons in an unborn baby's brain. A study in 1999 by the Harvard Graduate School of Education found that music had a small effect on spatial reasoning skills, which is most probably an effect of “intermittent, small, positive ‘enjoyment arousal’ effect, according to Quartz. Another study found that 10 minutes of Mozart’s "String Quintet in D Major" improved the ability to predict paper shapes, and listening to pop music can be even more effective. And we can all agree that music can undoubtedly affect our moods.

"It's very important to note that we did not find effects for general intelligence," Rauscher says in an interview with NPR back in 2010, "just for this one aspect of intelligence. It's a small gain, and it doesn't last very long."

There are other ways to boost your baby’s brain power. Reading to your baby while pregnant can help them process and learn information from the outside world. And just by talking to them you can already make them better learners.

Should you still make your babies listen to classical music? Of course. But it shouldn’t become a measure of your child’s intelligence.

Instead, you should look at music as a way to set up your child

While the study was not conducted on babies, it sparked a frenzy in the United States. “Mozart makes you smart” was the trending topic, and the news spread all

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C LASSIC A L M U SIC F O R BABY BR AIN D E V E LO P M EN T

for success — learning music, and not just listening to it, will teach your child significant traits like hard work, focus, and discipline. It will also nurture his creativity and boost his confidence.

While the link between Mo-

zart and smart babies has yet to be proven, that hasn’t stopped researchers from studying the effects of classical music on a

Are there any other Benefits that Classical Music can Give to Babies? newborn’s brain development.

So far the results have been promising, and various studies, discussed below, have demonstrated other benefits to playing classical music for your child.

A study by the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) found that playing music to 9month old babies led to an improved understanding of rhythm in speech and music.

The study followed 20 babies as they were played children’s music while they engaged in some rhythm exercises with their parents. Another set of 19 babies were given toys to play with, but were not played music. After a week, the babies were brain scanned while the music was played, only this time the song was occasionally interrupted to observe the effects on the brain.

The babies in the “music group” showed greater responses to disruptions in music and speech.

"Our study is the first to demonstrate that a type of enriched experience with sound other than language can influence infants' speech sound processing," lead researcher Christina Zhao said.

Similar to the previous study, researchers from McMaster University studied the effects of music on young children as supplemented by parental interaction. The researchers studied two classes of one-year olds: an “interactive” music group, where

the children learn percussion instruments and lullabies with their parents, and a “passive” music group, where the children played with toys while “Baby Einstein” played in the background. They found that the children participating in interactive music classes “smile more, communicate better and show earlier and more sophisticated brain responses to music.”

"Babies who participated in the interactive music classes with their parents showed earlier sensitivity to the pitch structure in music," says Laurel Trainor, director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind.

"Specifically, they preferred to listen to a version of a piano piece that stayed in key, versus a version that included out-of-key notes.”

G R AD E 10 — P ER SE VE R AM CE

we're saying is, it's not just any old lullaby that's recorded, it's the power of the parent's voice synchronized therapeutically...and the other two sounds that can have a therapeutic benefit."

It may be a while before we find conclusive evidence on the benefits of music on infants, but the existing research shows that your children have more to benefit from listening to music than from not. Dr. Diane Bales, Associate Professor and Extension Human Development Specialist at the University of Georgia argues that music doesn’t necessarily make children smarter, but it does prime the brain for certain thought processes.

“Researchers think the complexity of classical music is what primes the brain to solve spatial problems more quickly,” she says. “This doesn't mean that other types of music aren't good. Listening to any kind of music helps build music-related pathways in the brain.

Interestingly, the same could not And music can have positive effects on be said for the passive music our moods that may make learning easgroup. “Infants who participated ier.” in the passive listening classes did not show the same prefer- In the meantime, raising your child in a ences. Even their brains respond- creative, musical environment can still ed to music differently. Infants help them become more well-rounded from the interactive music clas- person as they learn and grow. ses showed larger and/or earlier brain responses to musical tones."

A study titled The Effects of Music Therapy on Vital Signs, Feeding, and Sleep in Premature Infants recently found positive effects to singing lullabies and playing simulated womb sounds.

These findings were improved blood oxygen levels, sucking behavior, and decreased stress as perceived by the parents.

272 babies from 11 different Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) were monitored by music therapists for 32 weeks.

Womb sounds were simulated using a variety of instruments to produce “whoosh” audio cues that were synchronized with the baby’s vital signs. Each baby was either small for their age or had a particular health condition.

"Many NICUs are noisy, or people put on random lullabies that are recorded," said study author Joanne Loewy, director of Beth Israel's Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine. "What

Source: ConceiveAbilities.com

GLOSSARY

GLOSSARY

Pythagoras—Pythagoras of Samos was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, Western philosophy.

Anti-depressant- are drugs used for the treatment of major depressive disorder and of other conditions, including some anxiety disorders, some chronic pain conditions, and to help manage some addictions

Endorphins- any of a group of hormones secreted within the brain and nervous system and having a number of physiological functions. They are peptides which activate the body's opiate receptors, causing an analgesic effect.

Mozart Effect- When the student's listened to the Mozart, they performed better on the spatial reasoning test. But it was a temporary improvement-the effect wore off after 15 minutes.

Synapses- a junction between two nerve cells, consisting of a minute gap across which impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter.

Serotonin- is a chemical that has a wide variety of functions in the human body. It is sometimes called the happy chemical, because it contributes to wellbeing and happiness.

Synuclein Alpha - is a protein whose function in the healthy brain is currently unknown. It is of great interest to Parkinson's researchers because it is a major constituent of Lewy bodies, protein clumps that are the pathological hallmark of Parkinson's disease.

Baroque Period- Derived from the Portuguese barroco, or “oddly shaped pearl,” the term “baroque” has been widely used since the nineteenth century to describe the period in Western European art music from about 1600 to 1750.

Cognitive Abilities- Cognitive abilities are brain-based skills we need to carry out any task from the simplest to the most complex. They have more to do with the mechanisms of how we learn, remember, problem-solve, and pay attention, rather than with any actual knowledge.

Cognitive Functions- can be defined as cerebral activities that lead to knowledge, including all means and mechanisms of acquiring information. Cognitive functions encompass reasoning, memory , attention, and language and lead directly to the attainment of information and, thus, knowledge.

Spatial-Temporal Reasoning- Spatial–temporal reasoning is an area of artificial intelligence which draws from the fields of computer science, cognitive science, and cognitive psychology.

Music Cognition- Music cognition is an interdisciplinary field concerned with applying the methods of cognitive science—experimental, computational, and neurological—to musical issues and problems Spatial Reasoning- Spatial reasoning is a category of reasoning skills that refers to the capacity to think about objects in three dimensions and to draw conclusions about those objects from limited information.

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Elicay, K. (2018, January 26).

Does Classical Music Make Your Baby Smarter? Here's the Truth.

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Castillo, S. (2015, March 13).

Listening To Classical Music Enhances Gene Activity: An Update On The Mozart Effect. Retrieved from https:// www.medicaldaily.com

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How Playing Music Helps Boost a Baby's Brain Development.

(2018, January 11). Retrieved from https:// www.conceiveabilities.com

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Rauscher, Frances H. (1994,August

Printed on March 6, 2019

More Information

16). Music and Spatial Task Performance: A Causal Relationship [PDF file]. Retrieved from https:// files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ •

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Chaffin, S., Roy, M., Gerin, W., & Christenfeld N. (2004, September 9). Music can facilitate blood pressure recovery from stress. Retrieved from https:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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(032) 272 7582 710 Bulacao, Pardo, Cebu City, Cebu

Martin, D. (2008, October 20).

Listening to classical music 'can relieve pregnancy stress.’. Retrieved from https:// www.dailymail.co.uk

Nelson, B. (n.d). 10 Wondrous Things That Happen to Your Body When You Listen to Classical Music. Retrieved from https:// www.rd.com McAdams, C. (n.d). How Does the Brain Respond to Classical Music?. Retrieved from https:// www.livestrong.com

Christian Manawatao

Source: MomJunction

Did You Know?

BIRTH TO AGE 3 SEES THE FASTEST RATE OF BRAIN DEVELOPMENT IN THE ENTIRE HUMAN LIFE SPAN Though you may think your darling is growing like a weed as chubby toddlerhood gives way to lanky kid, in the first three years of your child’s life, their brain is growing faster than any other body part. At birth, a baby's brain is about onethird the size of an adult's brain. In 90 days, it more than doubles its volume, to 55 percent of its final size. The cerebellum in particular, a brain structure at the back of the brain involved in controlling movement, grows the fastest of all brain structures; in just three months it will be 110 percent bigger than it was at birth.

Thessalonica Angeline P.

Albert Andrei Uy