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Music has a remarkable ability to affect and manipulate how we feel. Simply listening to songs we like stimulates the brain’s reward system, creating feelings of pleasure and comfort. But music goes beyond our hearts to our minds, shaping how we think. Scientific evidence suggests that even a little music training when we’re young can shape how brains develop, improving the ability to differentiate sounds and speech.
Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, René Descartes, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer — What do all of these great men have in common? They were all were musicians. Coincidence? Certainly not. Years of scientific studies are proving what many of us have known all along: Music education makes smarter, more successful students that grow up to be more productive adults.
Just a decade ago, Highbury Grove School was considered one of the worst in the U.K. capital. With a little help from music, it has now been ranked as "outstanding" by Britain's government. "We've created something magical," one teacher says. NBC News' Kiko Itasaka reports from London.
Playing a musical instrument from a young age appears to create new pathways in the brain that process written words and letters and may help children with reading disorders such as dyslexia, says a study in the journal Neuropsychologia. Musicians generally outperform nonmusicians on cognitive tests, but little is known about the effects of reading musical notes on the brain's circuitry as it relates to reading, researchers said.
Music needs to be a cornerstone of education. Music is an art and a science, and it's one of the best ways kids can learn creativity and those mythical critical thinking skills. The focus of the curriculum isn’t forcing everyone to learn about Bach or Mozart. It’s about learning how to think, rather than what to think.
Music and language are closely related — some might even say forms of one another. It is known, for example, that a musical background can enhance one’s ability to learn a second language. But now scientists have shown that the relationship can work in reverse. People who speak languages that use tones to convey meaning appear to have a better ear for learning music, according to research published in the journal PLOS ONE. The findings further highlight the overlap of music and language in the brain, and they suggest that tonal languages may prime the brain for the development of musical skills.
"The greatest scientists are artists as well," said Albert Einstein. As one of the greatest physicists of all time and a fine amateur pianist and violinist, he ought to have known! So what did Einstein mean and what does it tell us about the nature of creative thinking and how we should stimulate it?
Music produces profound and lasting changes in the brain. Schools should add classes, not cut them.
In a large-scale review of 400 research papers about the neurochemistry of music, researchers have shown that playing and listening to music has clear benefits for both mental and physical health. . . . In particular, music was found both to improve the body’s immune system function and to reduce levels of stress.
Our mission is the aesthetic education of JAA scholars: preparing them to experience, appreciate, and create beauty in its many artistic manifestations including visual media, dance, drama, and music. This mission is further focused on John Adams Academy’s tri-fold mission to teach classics, values, and servant-leadership.