Cognition Development and Music Training Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Cognition Development and Music Training - Essay Example His world is bounded by the sense of touch and better yet, by the sounds that his surroundings would offer. Perhaps a good example of how sounds contribute to the human brain is the teaching of verbal language to the young ones. The words they utter such as 'Mama' or 'Dada' results from the insistent and persistent training of the parents who illustrate by speaking to the baby in an instructional technique. Consider for example the study of Weber et al (as cited in Overy, 2000) which employed elementary school students from 50 Swiss educational institutions. There was an experimental curriculum in which language and math subjects were augmented with musical instruction. The finding was that those who availed of such an instruction performed better in language and reading than those who took the standard courses. Another interesting study is that of Gardiner et al (1996) who found out that those 1st grade students who availed of a program which replaced standard methods of instructions with musical teaching registered better performances in math and the languages. Indeed, the association between sounds and learning have been the interest of many studies some of which have been specialized as more scientific tools are becoming available. Consider for instance the study published in the Society of Neuroscience conducted by Lahav and Schlaug (2007) of Harvard Medical School. What they did was to teach nine randomly selected people (from a pool of candidates who have met certain criterions such as having no musical training) and teach them a five note, 24 second song. They then let the subjects listen to three different songs - the one they taught, another one with the same five notes but different... What they did was to teach nine randomly selected people (from a pool of candidates who have met certain criterions such as having no musical training) and teach them a five note, 24 second song. They then let the subjects listen to three different songs – the one they taught, another one with the same five notes but different arrangement and another one with additional notes. By using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), they were bale to come with an image that shows that when they hear the song they were taught there was significant activity on the frontal and parietal lobe. This part of the brain is associated with motor movements which leads the author to speculate that the human mind may have developed neuron systems which allows us to understand actions even when they cannot be observed but can only be heard such as when we hear the rustling of   leaves.  What is important to recognize is that these studies serve as proof that there is indeed a connection between the b rain and musical training.Professional Training in Music  Ã‚  After having illustrated the connection between brain development and sounds, we are now prepared to consider a much more complex topic and that is the inquiry into whether professional musicians have developed cognition abilities different than those who haven’t received musical training at all. I caution the reader, however, that this discussion does not presuppose that there is indeed some form of connection as what our previous discussion would tell us.