I passionately believe in the power of music and music education in enhancing human, and
other, life. However, the extent to which music does influence people isn't always obvious or easy
to understand, or to prove. I am in the early stages of developing pages to give information
supporting the importance of the study of instrumental music in human development, in terms of
overall physical, mental, emotional and spiritual growth. It is my hope to provide an accessible
overview here of the research to date in this area. However, this is only one of the projects on my
plate at the moment, and it may be a while before I complete this. In the meantime, I'll list some
references here that I've found so far:
Magne, C., Schon, D., and Besson, M. (2006). Musician children detect pitch violations in both music
and language better than nonmusician children: Behavioral and electrophysical approaches.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 199-211.
Aleman, A., Nieuwenstein, M. R., Bocker, K. B. E., & Hann, E. H. F. (2000). Music training and mental
imagery ability. Neuropsychologia, 38, 1664-1668.
Bilhartz, T.D., Bruhn, R.A., & Ohlson, J.E. (2000). The effect of early musical training on child
cognitive development. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 20, 615-636.
Brochard, R., Dufour, A., & Despres, O. (2004). Effect of musical expertise on visuospatial abilities:
Evidence from reaction times and mental imagery. Brain and Cognition, 54, 103-109.
Chan, A. S., Ho, Y.C., & Cheung, M.C. (1998). Music training improves verbal memory. Nature, 396,
128.
Costa-Giomi, E. (2004). Effects of three years of piano instuction on children's academic achievement,
school performance, and self-esteem. Psychology of Music, 32, 139-152.
Costa-Giomi, E. (1999). The effects of three years of piano instruction on children's cognitive
development. Journal of Research in Music Education, 47, 198-212.
Gaser, C., & Schlaug, G. (2003). Brain structures differ between musicians and non-musicians.
Journal of Neuroscience, 23, 9240-9245.
Graziano, A.B., Peterson, M., & Shaw, G.L. (1999). Enhanced learning of proportional math
through music training and spatial-temporal training. Neurological Research, 21, 139-152.
Gromko, J.E., & Poorman, A. (1998). The effect of music training on preschoolers' spatial
temporal task performance. Journal of Research in Music Education, 46, 173-181.
Hetland, L. (2000). Learning to make music enhances spatial reasoning. Journal of Aesthetic
Education, 34, 179-238.
Pantev, C., Oostenveld, R., Engelien, A., ross, B., Roberts, L.E., & Hoke, M. (1998). Increased auditory
cortical representation in musicians. Nature, 392, 811-814.
Patel, A.D., (2003b). Language, music, syntax and the brain. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 674-681.
Rauscher, F.H., Shaw, G.L., Levine, L.J., Wright, E.L., Dennis, W.R., & Newcomb, R. (1997). Music
training causes long-term enhancement of pre-school children's spatial-temporal reasoning.
Neurological Research, 19, 2-8.
Schellenberg, E.G. (2004). Music lessons enhance HQ. Psychological Science, 15, 511-514.
Schlaug, G., Jancke, L., Huang, Y., Staiger, J.F., & Steinmetz, H. (1995). Increased corpus collosum
size in musicians. Neuropsychologia, 33, 1047-1055.
Thompson, W.F., Schellenberg, E. G., & Husain, G. (2004). Decoding speech prosody: Do music lessons
help? Emotion, 4, 46-64.
Thompson, W.F., Schellenberg, E. G., & Husain, G. (2003). Perceiving prosody in speech: Effects of
music lessons. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 999, 530-532.