Ariella Kissin
Behavioral Neuroscience of Adolescence
Spring 2019
Position Paper
Why Schools Need In-School Musical Training for Brain Development in Adolescents
The aim of this position paper is to educate readers on the numerous benefits that music training has on the brain, as well as provide a background of how exactly the brain processes music, discuss the role of music in adolescence in regards to social processing and development, and make a case for parents and educators to take music training seriously in the daily lives of both children and adolescents.
Our brains reach 90% of adult size by the time that we are six years old. During the years between childhood and adolescence, our brains are still developing and neural connections are occurring, due to the plasticity of our brains. In a Northwestern study, researchers cited the fact that “relative to non- musician peers, musicians tend to show enhanced speech-in- noise perception, verbal memory, phonological skills, and reading, although not without exception. Music training has also been linked to enhancements in the encoding of sound throughout the auditory system.” It is therefore that in this position paper, I will argue for the availability of in-school music programs, as the benefits are significant and can have positive effects on adolescent brain development. (https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/32/10062.full.pdf)
Music training can positively alter adolescent brain development. For example, it is common knowledge that certain areas of the brain are responsible for learning languages, and that the obvious most advantageous time to learn a language is during childhood. Learning a new language during adolescence or even adulthood is far more difficult. The researchers of the Northwestern study stated that this is due to the fact that “subcortical response consistency peaks in childhood, waning into young adulthood, coinciding with a period when learning a second language becomes more difficult than earlier in life.” The areas of the brain that are most responsible for learning languages and for speaking are the Broca’s area, which is located in the frontal lobe, Wernicke’s area, located in the cerebral cortex, and the primary auditory cortex, which is located in the temporal lobe. The researchers hypothesized that the “response consistency” associated with language is often “enhanced in musicians.” Their goal, similar to mine, was to prove that in-school musical training has several advantages and therefore should be implemented and/or improved in schools. The “expected wane in subcortical response consistency,” which was previously mentioned in relation to language learning, was found to “maintain heightened neural consistency” throughout the students’ high school careers.
In order to test their hypothesis, the researchers used two groups of high schoolers who, due to their in-school available programs, chose either music training or JROTC. The students were tracked for the entirety of their high school careers. Both of these options required effort and dedication on the teenagers’ parts, despite being significantly different in terms of what they demanded. The results, depicted in the figure above, show the neural results for both the groups. This result in particular was that of the “subcortical response consistency” which was also cited by the researchers as being important in language comprehension and learning. The students who partook in JROTC experienced a decline in this neural category, while for the musically trained individuals, it was more consistent. In addition, the group of students were musically trained “exhibited earlier emergence of the adult cortical response,” which to the researchers was a sign that musical training “accelerates neurodevelopment.” Their overall conclusion was that the adolescent brain “remains receptive to training,” but it is not a given and work must be dedicated to its enhancement; in this case, the key contributor was musical training implemented in schools. (https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/32/10062.full.pdf)
It comes as no surprise that different aspects of music, whether listening, composing, or producing it are beneficial for several different areas of the brain. But common public knowledge about the benefits of music is underrepresented in schools and in home life. Even something so simple as humming a familiar tune, is using “auditory pattern-processing mechanisms, attention, memory storage and retrieval, motor programming, sensory–motor integration, and so forth (Nature).” This position paper will aim to educate readers on the several advantages that music has on the brain, connect the importance of adolescent involvement with music, and urge schools and educators to implement more music programs for both children and adolescents, as it will be a part of their identities for the rest of their lives. My position of this topic is that music is crucial for brain development and is especially important for social processing in adolescents. Music itself provides us with a tool to study several aspects of neuroscience extensively, as it utilizes many areas of the brain. Some aspects of this are motor-skill learning and emotion. It is known that writing, listening, and producing music utilizes several areas of human cognitive functions. “Specifically, emotional processing of music most likely involves limbic and paralimbic structures that include amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, insula, temporal poles, ventral striatum, orbitofrontal cortex, and the cingulate cortex.”
How does music specifically relate to adolescents? It is a huge source of "enjoyment and entertainment” and according to a University of Montreal study, adolescence is often when time dedicated to music increases dramatically, with an average listener being exposed to music from two to three hours a day. The same study cites the fact that music listening is crucial for developmental tasks, including “self-actualization, individual and cultural identity, socialization and integration with peers, and emotion regular” (University of Montreal). Developmentally speaking, the adolescent exposure to music is advantageous for two distinct reasons: one is social, which includes friendships with other peers, new relationships, and cultural and personal identities. The second is individual, which includes “mood-regulation and coping.” This study relates the exposure to music to mental health, saying that much of the themes of adolescence, such as forming new relationships, mental health struggles, and so on, can be connected to their relationship with music. For example, it is common knowledge that during adolescence, teenagers often look to new peers and relationships outside of their familial ones in an attempt to “break away” and become more independent. That is ultimately one of the major pillars of adolescence: teenagers begin to form relationships with their peers and therefore, because they do not rely so much on their parents, begin to experiment with identity. Music provides an outlet for this, as numerous genres and styles contribute to several different identities. A study done by researchers at Northwestern University concluded that “beginning music training as late as high school can improve the teenage brain’s response to sound, sharpen language skills, and improve academic performance”
While this paper aims primarily to educate others on the effects that music has on the brain, it is worth mentioning other positive influences that music has on individuals that isn’t restricted to neuroscience. A 2014 study found that patients with fibromyalgia experienced a slight decrease in physical pain after listening to music. The decrease in pain was due to the fact that listening to music is a possible trigger of opioids. Opioids are known as “the body’s natural pain relievers.” The method that researchers used for this experiment was to evaluate the pain levels of patients listening to their favorite songs compared to listening to “pink noise.” From their results, the researchers were able to “encourage the use of music as a treatment adjuvant to reduce chronic pain in FM and increase functional mobility thereby reducing the risk of disability.” This is a significant improvement and can positively impact patients suffering from this disease. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24575066)
An additional benefit to music in our daily lives is that it is known to reduce stress. There have been numerous studies in which researchers have had two groups of participants involved in a stressful task or experience, such as having an IV inserted. One group listened to music while the second group didn’t. The results are almost always the same: music played a significant role in decreasing the amount of stress that participants endured.
Risk-taking is so appealing to adolescents because of the release of dopamine and/or serotonin in the brain when exposed to several different factors, such as drugs and alcohol, peer acceptance, sex, and so on. Music adds to the list of triggers that release dopamine. A research study from the McGill University in Montreal took on the task of tracking how exactly music affects us. One of their results was that “levels of dopamine were found to be up to 9% higher when volunteers were listing to music enjoyed.” The methods used for this particular study were that of brain scans. The response to listening to music was measured in “chills,” which was also referenced as “peak enjoyment.” A PET scan was used for the participants, and the way that the researchers went about the methods was to scan their responses when they listened to music they enjoyed and music that they were “neutral” to. Then, using an fMRI scan, the participants listened to music they enjoyed and music that they felt neutral about, alternating between the two. The researchers also made sure to mark when the participants felt some sort of chill- often exhibited by a shiver down their spine. Unsurprisingly, the dopamine release levels were higher when the participants listened to their choice of enjoyable music.
This can be related to adolescence, because teenagers often look to dopamine-releasing activities that fulfill their desire for risk-taking and reward-seeking. Common ways that teenagers attempt to satisfy this reward-seeing system is by taking risks such as engaging in illegal activities, such as driving under the influence, taking drugs, drinking alcohol, and having unprotected sex and getting caught up in “unhealthy” or “toxic” relationships with other peers. While on a practical level, simply listing to music will not replace these aforementioned activities, but more exposure to it, whether on the radio, or the knowledge of theory or composition, not to mention actual experience learning how to play a new instrument, can significantly benefit teenagers in terms of replacing the dopamine pathways that would otherwise be taken up by risky and dangerous behaviors.
The benefits of music, whether engaging in training or simply listening to it, extend past simply neuroscience-related advantages. The aforementioned benefits, such as stress relief and pain reduction, are simply supplements to the argument that schools should be providing in-school musical training to adolescents. The role of music is especially important when relating to the themes of adolescence, such as peer association. When it comes to actual brain development, the Northwestern researchers noted that their results “support the notion that the adolescent brain remains receptive to training, underscoring the importance of enrichment during teenage years.” Adolescence is an extremely sensitive time; if the advantages of musical training were more well-known, then more and more schools would be implementing these programs instead of cutting their funding. It is somewhat ironic that schools tend to cut music and art programs in order to make room for standardized testing prep; if only they understood that the benefits of music include the development and consistency of subcortical responses relating to speech and language, as well as the development of the cerebellum. I hope that educators are encouraged to take the steps necessary to provide such an outlet for adolescents, because the advantages are tremendous and can truly make a difference.
Works Cited
BBC News. (2019). Music 'boosts good mood chemical'. [online] Available at: https:// www.bbc.com/news/health-12135590 [Accessed 10 May 2019].
Garza-Villarreal EA , et al. (n.d.). Music reduces pain and increases functional mobility in fibromyalgia. - PubMed - NCBI. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ 24575066
Tierney, A., Krizman, J. and Kraus, N. (2015). Music training alters the course of adolescent auditory development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(32), pp. 10062-10067.
SAGE Journals. (2019). Music listening, coping, peer affiliation and depression in adolescence - Dave Miranda, Michel Claes, 2009. [online] Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/ doi/pdf/10.1177/0305735608097245? asa_token=JmispfJKDzsAAAAA:T5EMPBG2oVJluaMe0SnwP5F3jb4F1BlwnpqHpikEOZV2 wXAXlUEmZX435MytQQG7VWkadZb-lfTYujc [Accessed 10 May 2019].
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