How music helps your child’s brain grow

Kinderling Radio in Australia spoke to Anita Collins, Professor in Neuroscience and Child Education at the University of Canberra, recently, about how music can help your child’s brain grow from the very beginning.

During the interview, Professor Collins talks about a baby’s Music Processing Network which starts working from the very beginning of a child’s life. Babies don’t understand any language during their very early years, but their Music Processing Network is working overtime to gain meaning from language, even before they have learned and understood the language.

Professor Collins suggests exposing children to a wide variety of music between the ages of 0-7 years-old to help their brains grow. She says, that just as a varied diet is good for our bodies, so a varied diet of music is good for our brains.

She goes on to say that playing music – with any instrument which makes a musical sound – helps a child to develop its brain network in order to later understand language, science, etc.. There is plenty of research available, she says, to prove that when a child engages in ongoing music education it improves their abilities in so many other areas of life, and that every child – not just the most gifted – can benefit. Put simply, playing a musical instrument ‘supercharges’ the brain’s learning.

Read more on the Musiceducationworks website