How Music Benefits Infants

While the studies on the “Mozart effect” have disproved that listening to Mozart makes your toddler smarter, there are still numerous benefits to exposing your infant or young child to music and music lessons. Here are a couple of ways that music helps to develop your child’s brain.

1. Spatial/temporal reasoning: Preschool students who took music lessons did better at spatial and temporal tasks than their peers who received computer lessons. 1

2. Language development: Singing, or playing songs to your child helps to foster learning a language. Music works as a memory enhancer; speak the lyrics to a familiar song you know, for example the “Star Spangled Banner”. Now try singing the song... in most cases, people tend to remember the lyrics better when they sing them!

3. Classical music helps form synapses: While any genre of music will help the brain to develop synapses (neuron connections), classical seems to do the best job do to the complex harmonic structure. Playing classical music for your infant or toddler will poise the brain to create synapses that will function for cognitive purposes later in school.

4. Music lessons: According to studies, music lessons pay way more dividends than just listening to music. Even at a very young age, music lessons actually create new pathways in the brain, which is a longer lasting effect than simply listening.