Jonathan Skufca

Music and the Mind

HNRS-300-001H

The Neuroscience of Music Education

Broad Overview of Relevance of Topic:

 Should there be a greater focus on music education in schools?

o Studies on my topic, while not often directly supported by pro-music education groups,
nearly always use this discussion to frame why their research is relevant.
o Most studies, including the one that is the focus of my presentation, focus on musical
training and speech processing, especially in differentiation of sounds in speech.

Term to know:

 Auditory Brainstem Response: The first response that occurs upon one hearing a sound. Creates
a response waveform that is similar to the original stimulus. Often, the cABR (Auditory
Brainstem Response collected in response to speech and other complex sounds) is what is
collected in these types of studies.

“Music Enrichment Programs Improve the Neural Encoding of Speech in At-Risk Children”

Young students in an at-risk neighborhood were split up into two groups. One group had one year
of no musical training, with musical training beginning the next year, with only one year of
training. The other group had their training, which consisted of music fundamentals and
instrumental lessons, commence immediately, with a total of two years of training. Once a year,
the students were presented with two distinct syllables, [ba] and [ga] among other white noise
while cABRs were being recorded.

At the conclusion of the study, it was found that the group that had begun musical training
immediately had significantly better differentiation in the auditory brainstem between the two
syllables than those students who had a control year with no training. The researchers concluded
“the improvements observed in neurophysiological distinction of speech sounds were driven by
top-down modifications to automatic auditory processing.”

In the real world, this implies that musicians are better at picking out what is relevant out of
background noise.