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      Musical training influences linguistic abilities in 8-year-old children: more evidence for brain plasticity.

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          Abstract

          We conducted a longitudinal study with 32 nonmusician children over 9 months to determine 1) whether functional differences between musician and nonmusician children reflect specific predispositions for music or result from musical training and 2) whether musical training improves nonmusical brain functions such as reading and linguistic pitch processing. Event-related brain potentials were recorded while 8-year-old children performed tasks designed to test the hypothesis that musical training improves pitch processing not only in music but also in speech. Following the first testing sessions nonmusician children were pseudorandomly assigned to music or to painting training for 6 months and were tested again after training using the same tests. After musical (but not painting) training, children showed enhanced reading and pitch discrimination abilities in speech. Remarkably, 6 months of musical training thus suffices to significantly improve behavior and to influence the development of neural processes as reflected in specific pattern of brain waves. These results reveal positive transfer from music to speech and highlight the influence of musical training. Finally, they demonstrate brain plasticity in showing that relatively short periods of training have strong consequences on the functional organization of the children's brain.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          Cereb Cortex
          Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
          Oxford University Press (OUP)
          1460-2199
          1047-3211
          Mar 2009
          : 19
          : 3
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives de la Méditerranée, CNRS-Marseille-Universités, Marseille, France.
          Article
          bhn120
          10.1093/cercor/bhn120
          18832336
          20731169-24da-486f-a5e9-d6968102b58d
          History

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