Musicians are More Intelligent

I think many people would agree that music is an important part of life. People that learn to play an instrument or sing can express their feelings in an artistic way. They can let their creativity grow and have an outlet for themselves. Not only do musicians experience this, but they often are more intelligent than non-musicians.

It has been proven through brain scans that musicians have significantly more grey matter in several brain regions. Grey matter is made up of neuronal cell bodies. The grey matter includes regions of the brain involved in muscle control, sensory perception such as seeing and hearing, memory, emotions, and speech.

However this doesn’t necessarily work the other way around. Just because you are born with more grey matter doesn’t mean you’re going to become a musician. But studies have shown that as someone learns an instrument the grey matter in their brain grows.

Now does this mean that those brain growths will affect intelligence? In the study of 9 to 11-year olds, (Schlaug et al 2005), musicians performed better on several tests than their non-musical peers. They scored significantly higher on tests of vocabulary and finger tapping. They also presented a strong, but statistically non-significant, trend towards better spatial and math skills. Other studies also show very significant differences of the intelligence of musicians vs. non-musicians.

In two studies, Schellenberg 2006 and Patel and Iverson 2007, it was proven that musicians performed significantly better on certain tests. These tests include: spatial-temporal skills, math ability, reading skills, vocabulary, verbal memory, pneumonic awareness, working memory, perceptual organization, and processing speed.

Another study, Hanna-Pladdy and Mackay 2011, had shown that the more years a person had spent playing an instrument, the better he performed on tests of word recall, visual (nonverbal) memory, and cognitive flexibility.

Many of these same studies had shown that music lessons might enhance intelligence because they train kids to focus attention for long periods of time, decode a complex symbolic system (musical notation), translate the code into precise motor patterns, recognize patterns of sound across time, learn rules of pattern formation, memorize long passages of music, understand ratios and fractions, and improvise within a set of musical rules.

This definitely can make the argument that music is important in children’s lives. If a child can become more intelligent by taking music lessons, it would be a wise decision to enroll them in music classes.