Music and Children’s Brain Development
The first three years of a child’s life represent an important period in the future of every individual, since there is established the special relationship between parents and children called “attachment”, music can help strengthen this link and make them become a healthy and operational. Throughout the world, when parents talk to their young children adjust their voices to make them smoother, more rhythmic, more musical.
Music can be a vehicle for the development of the child covering the cognitive, social, emotional, affective, motor, language and the ability to read and write.
Music and its origins
Music is a universal means of expression, it is believed that its origins are related to the voice of man. The first musical instruments appeared around 2500 BC in Egyptian culture. In ancient Greece and Rome, around 5 century BC, was essentially vocal music, and made use of percussion instruments, string and wind. About v century AD, the Christian era brought with it the emergence of liturgical songs. In the Middle Ages came the Gregorian chant as the most important musical event of the day. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries appeared opera, instrumental music with the great composers of classical music (Vivaldi, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mozart and others), represented the maturity of the music.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there was an expansion and enhancement of various musical instruments. The music began to be used as a therapeutic method especially in the second half of the twentieth century, due to the recognition of its effects on affective state and care of individuals.
The Brain
The human brain is the organ most important and most complex nervous system, is an organ that undergoes changes during childhood maturation and is highly sensitive to external stimuli. Anatomically can be divided into two hemispheres (right and left), each with different functional characteristics and special, consisting of lobes and covered by a structure called the cerebral cortex which are areas of human development.
Neuroanatomical studies have shown that the left hemisphere specializes in language processing and the right hemisphere in the perception and processing of music.
The human brain operates by means of connections (synapses) that make brain cells called neurons and are responsible for transmitting nerve impulses that determines our conduct.
The human brain has a high learning ability and has the property to operate in extreme situations or both organic and functional deficits, this ability is called plasticity.
The effect “Mozart” and effect “Tomatis”
A mid-twentieth century, a French ENT doctor Alfred Tomatis, began a rehabilitation proposal aimed at people with hearing or speech difficulties.
Your treatment program consisted of musical stimulation through listening pieces of Mozart and other classical composers, obtaining positive changes in the rehabilitation of language and speech development, this effect has been called the “Tomatis effect.” Also, this eminent physician developed a new model of growth and development of human hearing and acknowledged that the fetus hears inside the womb sounds (such as movements of digestion, heart rates and respiration of the mother). He also noted that relaxes the baby when he hears the voice of the mother.
In 1993, Rauscher and colleagues at the University of California published the results of research conducted with groups of university students who were exposed for 10 minutes listening to a Mozart sonata, achieving high scores on tests of visuospatial and general cognitive and a transient rise IQ. In this discovery it was called “Mozart effect.”
Subsequent studies have shown that listening to Mozart music triggers behavioral changes (in relation to states of alert and calm), affect (induced emotional states) and metabolic (increased calcium and dopamine in the brain).
The music and its effects on brain development
The investigations have concerned the effect of music on children’s brains, have agreed that this causes an activation of the cerebral cortex, specifically the frontal and occipital areas, involved in spatial processing.
In addition to assessing the effects of music through EEG records, found that music creates an alpha brain electrical activity. All the above translates as follows: music (especially classical music, Mozart) causes:
• Increased memory capacity, attention and concentration of children.
• Improves the ability to solve complex mathematical and reasoning.
• It is a way of expressing.
• Introduce children to the sounds and meanings of words and reinforces learning.
• Provides the opportunity for children to interact with each other and with adults.
• Stimulates creativity and imagination in children.
• When combined with dancing, stimulating the senses, balance, and muscle.
• Raises the evocation of memories and images which enriches the intellect.
• Stimulates the development of the child, acting on all areas of development.
To conclude only other music that plays an important role in the process learning of students (especially early childhood education), therefore, teachers, educational institutions, parents and health personnel should know the scope and benefits from the use of music as a major part of educating the whole child.
