Learning to play an instrument does appear to change how a child's brain processes sound. In a study by neuroscientists at the University of Southern California (USC), children who spent two years in an orchestra programme showed faster maturation of the auditory pathway than children in a sports programme or in no programme at all. What the research does not show is that music lessons make children smarter across the board.
That difference matters for parents choosing after-school activities and for schools deciding whether to keep music classes. Here is what the USC team measured, what they found when they followed the children further, and how their results fit with larger reviews of music and child development.
The USC study in brief
The project was run by the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC, directed by neuroscientists Antonio and Hanna Damasio, together with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), a community organisation. It began in 2012 as a five-year longitudinal study of how music training shapes children's social, emotional and cognitive development.
The first report followed 37 children from low-income Los Angeles neighbourhoods. Thirteen of them started music instruction at age 6 or 7 through Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA), a programme modelled on Venezuela's El Sistema, the youth-orchestra network that trained the conductor Gustavo Dudamel. These children learned instruments such as the violin in group lessons and ensembles, practising for up to seven hours a week.
For comparison, the researchers followed 11 children enrolled in a community football (soccer) programme and 13 who had no structured after-school activity. Including a sports group was a smart choice: it helps separate the effect of music from the general benefits of any organised, adult-led activity.
How the scientists measured the hearing brain
When sound reaches the ear, it is turned into nerve signals that travel through the brainstem and the thalamus to the auditory cortex, near the sides of the head. As children grow, this pathway becomes faster and more efficient, and its development can be tracked with EEG, which records the brain's electrical responses through sensors on the scalp.
The team looked at a response called P1, which appears a fraction of a second after a sound. Two features of P1 are useful markers of maturity: its amplitude, which reflects how many neurons fire together, and its latency, how quickly the response appears. In typical development both tend to shrink with age as the system becomes more streamlined.
At the start and again two years later, the children listened to violin notes, piano notes and pure tones while the EEG recorded. They also compared pairs of melodies, 24 in total presented twice in random order, and said which pairs differed in pitch or rhythm. MRI scans and behavioural tests completed the picture.
What the first results showed
After two years, the young musicians were better than both comparison groups at spotting pitch changes in melodies, although all three groups could easily tell when two melodies were identical. Their P1 responses had decreased more in amplitude and latency than those of the other children, and a later response called N1 was developing faster. The researchers interpreted this as accelerated maturation of the auditory system, an example of neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to reshape itself in response to experience.
The paper, led by research scientist Assal Habibi with B. Rael Cahn and the Damasios, appeared in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience in 2016. The authors suggested that sharper sound processing could in time support language, speech perception and reading, which rely on the same auditory pathway. They were careful to present that as a possibility they were still testing, not a finding.
Follow-up results: brain structure and decision-making
In November 2017 the group reported on a larger sample: 20 children in the youth orchestra, 19 in the sports programme and 21 with no specific programme. A paper in Cerebral Cortex found differences in the thickness and volume of auditory areas in the music-trained children and signs of stronger connections through the corpus callosum, the bundle of fibres linking the two halves of the brain.
A second paper, in PLoS One, used a colour-word Stroop test, in which you name the ink colour of a word like "red" printed in blue. The young musicians showed more activity in brain networks linked to executive function, the set of skills that help us control impulses and make decisions. Habibi described musical training as something that "is a powerful intervention that could help children mature emotionally and intellectually."
These are encouraging results, but they come with limits. Groups of about 20 children are small, the families chose their programmes rather than being randomly assigned, and all the children came from similar neighbourhoods. The studies show differences between groups, not proof that music alone caused them.
What larger reviews say about music and intelligence
The popular idea that music lessons raise IQ or school grades has been tested many times. In 2020, psychologists Giovanni Sala and Fernand Gobet published a meta-analysis in Memory & Cognition pooling 54 studies with nearly 7,000 children aged 3 to 16. Once study quality was taken into account, they found no meaningful effect of music training on general cognitive skills or on maths, reading and writing. Small benefits appeared mainly in weaker studies without proper control groups.
Sala summed it up bluntly, saying that "the common idea that 'music makes children smarter' is incorrect." Other researchers have reanalysed the same body of evidence and argue for a small positive effect, so the debate is not closed. Both sides agree on one thing: specific skills such as pitch discrimination improve with training, while broad "far transfer" to unrelated abilities is weak or hard to detect.
That fits neatly with the USC data. Hearing-related changes in children who practise music for hours each week are exactly what you would expect. Claims that the same lessons will lift maths scores need much stronger evidence.
Music therapy and mental health: a calmer look
Versions of this story often add that hundreds of studies have "proven" music is medicine. The evidence is more modest. A Cochrane review of music therapy for depression, covering nine trials and 421 people, found that adding music therapy to usual care probably reduces depressive symptoms in the short term, with moderate certainty, and that longer-term effects are unknown. Research on anxiety and pain is promising but mixed in quality.
Music therapy, delivered by trained therapists, is a useful addition to care for many people. It is not a replacement for medical treatment. Anyone dealing with depression, anxiety or chronic pain should talk to a doctor about the options that fit them.
Practical takeaways for parents and schools
- Choose music for its own sake. Learning an instrument builds listening skills, patience and the satisfaction of slow progress. Those are good reasons on their own, without promises about grades.
- Group playing counts. The YOLA children learned in ensembles, which adds teamwork and belonging. Community orchestras, choirs and school bands offer similar experiences at low cost.
- Regular practice matters more than early starts. The measurable changes came after two years of frequent practice. Short, occasional lessons are unlikely to produce the same effects.
- Access is the real issue. The USC programmes served children from low-income areas, where arts classes are often the first to be cut. Keeping music in schools gives every child the chance to find out whether it suits them.
- Sport is valuable too. The football group was a comparison, not a failure. Children benefit from different kinds of structured activity, and the best one is the one they will stick with.
Sources: USC News, 14 June 2016: Music training accelerates brain development in children; USC News, 15 November 2017: Music training strengthens children's brains' decision-making network; Sala & Gobet (2020), Cognitive and academic benefits of music training with children: a multilevel meta-analysis, Memory & Cognition; MinnPost, August 2020: Music lessons may not help children do better in academic subjects; American Family Physician, 2020: Cochrane for Clinicians, Music therapy for depression; earlier version of this story by Joe Battaglia at Prevent Disease.
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