Music positively benefits all aspects of your wellbeing, whether it’s your mind, your body or your emotional wellness. Songs can trigger certain parts of your brain, which are responsible for such aspects as memory and vision, as well as concentration and mood. Specifically, Music Education programmes develop your baby’s success in society and life, schooling and developing intelligence. According to the Children’s Music Workshop, early musical training helps develop brain areas involved in language and reasoning, as well as spatial intelligence, which is the ability to accurately perceive the world and visualise things. Students of the arts do better in standardised tests and classroom grades, and music teaches young people teamwork skills, discipline, to conquer fear and to take risks.
For this particular study, the team from McMaster University felt that the infant brain would be particularly responsive to musical exposure – even before they can walk or talk. Director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, Laurel Trainor, and music educator and graduate student, David Gerry gave parents and babies six months of weekly music instruction. One group took a class that involved interactive music-making and learning lullabies, nursery rhymes, songs with actions and to play percussion instruments, whilst the other group played at various toy stations whilst listening to ‘Baby Einstein’ music recordings.
The results were that the one-year-olds of the first group smiled more, communicated better, and showed earlier and more sophisticated brain responses to musical tones, as well as being easier to soothe and less distressed when things weren’t going their way. According to Trainor ‘Babies who participated in the interactive music classes with their parents showed earlier sensitivity to the pitch structure in music,’ which amounted to a development of musical taste: ‘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. Infants who participated in the passive listening classes did not show the same preferences.’
Study coordinator Andrea Unrau added ‘There are many ways that parents can connect with their babies’ but the ‘great thing about music is, everyone loves it and everyone can learn simple interactive musical games together.’ So sing and play music often at home, and invest in some percussion instruments to see whether you and your baby’s wellness improve.