TICKLING THE IVORIES -- Olga Yoffe, piano instructor and co-president of the Palo Alto branch of the Music Teachers Association of California, gives lessons to a Menlo Park resident. Daily News photo by Victor Maccharoli.
Music in the Schools
Sharing the Joy Of Music
TICKLING THE IVORIES -- Olga Yoffe, piano instructor and co-president of the Palo Alto branch of the Music Teachers Association of California, gives lessons to a Menlo Park resident. Daily News photo by Victor Maccharoli.
Nov 28, 2006 Palo Alto Daily News, Daniel Velton, Staff Writer
A study conducted at Stanford University has shown that learning and mastering a musical instrument improves part of the brain involved in spoken language, a finding that could have effects on the way educators view the role of music in the classroom.
Dr Nadine Gaab, currently at the Massachusetts Institue of Technology, was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford in 2004 when she conducted experiments involving people between 18 and 24 years old.
"People have already shown that musical experience has a positive influence on Language, " Gaab said. "What we showed is why." During the study, the test subjects, all of whom were native English speakers, were exposed to a progression of sounds with similar-sounding syllables such as "ba-da" or "ga-ka." Another test involved listening to three tone sequences and determining their order from lowest to highest.
The study showed that musicians (most of whom were trained in and played classical music) performed better in the tests than their nonmusician peers.
"The musicians showed a more efficient brain," Gaab said. "They used less effort to keep track and of fast changes."
The brain activity was analyzed by an MRI test that measured the levels of oxgen use in particular regions of the brain associated with the processing of sound.
In the tone test, musicians discerned the sequences correctly at least 85 percent of the time, compared to the 50 percent average of their nonmusician counterparts. The ability to perceive the tones could be compared to distinguishing syllables in reading and language comprehension.
Gaab acknowledged, however, that it remains unknown whether learning music improves language skills, or whether merely having a predisposition for musical skills translates into linguistic abilities.
She said that subsequent studies could involve younger children and shed light on music's potential to help youth with reading disabilities.
Local music educators hope that studies such as the recent Stanford experiment alert lawmakers who could influence funding for music in the classroom.
Virginia Fruchterman, a board member of the Music in the Schools program, which provides music teachers to more than 1,000 young students in East Palo Alto each week, said "I would hope this gets the attention of people in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. so they stop looking at art as frills."
The East Palo Alto program, launched in the mid-'90s, is a nonprofit organization that supplies $35,000 to fund three music teachers who teach preschoolers through fourth-graders about the basics of music, such as rhythm and tone. She said that no concrete statistics were available as to whether music lessons improve their language skills, but she said it was not unreasonable to believe they would.
"It makes a lot of sense that the two are very closely linked and that music can help children in language development," Frutcherman said. "As a musician you have to listen to yourself very closely, learning critical listening. Music is essentially an imitation of sounds in nature, and speech."
Olga Yoffe, co-president of the Palo Alto branch of the Music Teachers' Association of California, said that she hopes studies such as the one at Stanford will pave the way for possible funding and expansion of music programs in schools.
"Music requires a lot of concentration and a lot of logical thinking," she said. "There are a lot of patterns in side the music, and the faster you recognize the patterns, the better."
She said the skill could perhaps carry over into language, which also has patterns.
By way of example, she uttered a staccato Tra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tra-ta-tra-ta-ta.
"If I can't say it, I can't play it," she said.