The Musical Mind

Music makes you smarter. We’ve all heard that before. But is it true? Is there any evidence for this claim? What parts of intelligence might music affect? How does it make you smarter?

Scientists have also been interested in these questions. Over the past twenty years, there have been numerous psychological and neuroscientific studies investigating the link between music and the mind. The upshot? Musicians have better cognitive skills than their non- musician counterparts across multiple domains of intelligence. Studies have demonstrated that in areas as diverse as reading, spatial ability, memory, perception, and executive function, musical training is associated with higher performance. These changes can be seen in the brain, with musicians showing bigger brain size, more connectivity, and higher

neural efficiency.

What’s more, studies show that being a musician isn’t just correlated with improved cognitive abilities; training in music can cause improvements in many cognitive domains. Though the results are not unambiguous, there

is solid evidence that participating in musical training can lead to increases in several aspects of intelligence — results that are bolstered by thecorrelational findings of superior abilities in trained musicians.

Musicians show larger vocabularies, better reading ability, and enhanced recognition of emotions in speech.