Music and Spatial-Temporal Relationships

Rauscher, F.H., Shaw, G L., Levine, L.J., Ky, K.N., and E. L. Wright. Music and Spatial Task Performance: A Causal Relationship.

The study determined that music training can improve the spatial reasoning of 3-year olds. The research explored the hypothesis that musical activity and other higher cognitive functions share inherent neural firing patterns organized in a highly structured spatial-temporal code over large regions of the cortex. The researchers sought to determine that music could be used to develop these inherent firing patterns, along with associated behaviors that are relevant to spatial reasoning. The study looked at long-term facilitation, especially in very young children in whom the cortex was still maturing. Specifically the study investigated effects of music training with 3- to 4.75-years olds and the long-term enhancement of nonverbal cognitive abilities. After 4 months of daily group singing lessons and weekly keyboard instruction, these preschool children were found to be superior to a control group on the test of spatial abilities as assessed on various tests of spatial-temporal abilities. Music training consisted of weekly 10- to 15-minute private electronic keyboard lessons and daily 30-minute group singing lessons. Songs included popular children's tunes and folk melodies. The Object Assembly task was the only test showing marked improvement with music lessons. It was the only tested task given that required the child to form a mental image and then orient physical objects to reproduce that image. Researchers propose that success on this task is directed by cortical pattern development facilitated by the music lessons. The study proposed that musical activities help systematize the cortical firing patterns of neurons so they can be maintained for other pattern development duties, in particular, the right hemisphere function of spatial task performance.

Rauscher, F.H., Shaw, G.L., Levine, L.J., Wright, E.L., Dennis, W.R. & Newcomb, R.L. (1997). Music training causes long term enhancement of preschool children's spatial-temporal reasoning, Neurological Research, 19, 2-8.

Predictions from a structured cortical model led the authors to test the hypothesis that music training enhances young children's spatial-temporal reasoning. Seventy-eight preschool children participated in this study. Thirty-four children received private piano keyboard lessons, 20 children received private computer lessons, and 24 children provided other controls. Four standard, age-calibrated, spatial reasoning tests were given before and after training; one test assessed spatial-temporal reasoning and three tests assessed spatial recognition. Significant improvement on the spatial-temporal test was found for the keyboard group only. No group improved significantly on the spatial recognition tests. The magnitude of the spatial-temporal improvement from keyboard training was greater than one standard deviation of the standardized test and lasted at least one day, a duration traditionally classified as long term. This represents an increase in time by a factor of over 100 compared to a previous study in which listening to a Mozart piano sonata primed spatial-temporal reasoning in college students. This suggests that music training produces long-term modifications in underlying neural circuitry in regions not primarily concerned with music and might be investigated using EEG. The authors propose that an improvement of the magnitude reported may enhance the learning of standard curricula, such as mathematics and science, that draw heavily upon spatial-temporal reasoning.

Enhanced learning of proportional math through music training and spatial-temporal training. Neurological Research, 1999, Volume 21, March, pp. 139-152.

Amy B. Graziano, Matthew Peterson and Gordon L. Shaw

Department of Physics and Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, University of California, Irvine, CA
Department of Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA
Music Intelligence Neural Development Institute, Irvine, CA

ABSTRACT
It was predicted, based on a mathematical model of the cortex, that early music training would enhance spatial-temporal reasoning. We have demonstrated that preschool children given six months of piano keyboard lessons improved dramatically on spatial-temporal reasoning while children in appropriate control groups did not improve. It was then predicted that the enhanced spatial-temporal reasoning from piano keyboard training could lead to enhanced learning of specific math concepts, in particular proportional math, which is notoriously difficult to teach using the usual language-analytic methods. We report here the development of Spatial-Temporal Math Video Game software designed to teach fractions and proportional math, and its strikingly successful use in a study involving 237 second-grade children. Furthermore, as predicted, children given piano keyboard training along with the Math Video Game training scored significantly higher on proportional math and fractions than children given a control training along with the Math Video Game. These results were readily measured using the companion Math Video Game Evaluation Program. The training time necessary for children to reach a high level of performance on the Math Video Game is very rapid. This suggests that, as predicted, we are tapping into fundamental cortical processes of spatial-temporal reasoning. This spatial-temporal approach is easily generalized to teach other math and science concepts in a complementary manner to traditional language-analytic methods, and at a younger age. The neural mechanisms involved in thinking through fractions and proportional math during training with the Math Video Game might be investigated in EEG coherence studies along with priming by specific music.

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