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Does music influence the intellect too? Some studies seem to point in this direction. Psychologists from Chinese University of Hong Kong found that children who are given musical training have better verbal memories than those who have not had lessons. They reported their findings in the journal Neuropsychology

The researchers studies 90 boys between the ages of six and 15. Half had been given musical training as members of their school’s string orchestra and had received lessons in playing classical music on Western instruments, for up to five years. The rest, all students, at the same school, had received no musical training.

All the children were given verbal memory tests, to see how many words they recalled from a list, and a visual memory test for images. Those students who had been given music lessons recalled significantly more words than the untrained students and generally learned more words with each subsequent test. They were also able to retain more words than the other group when tested 30 minutes later. The longer the boys had been receiving music lessons, better their verbal memory was as well.

According to the researchers, music lessons stimulate the left side of the brain, which also controls verbal learning. Giving music lesson to children “somehow contributes to reorganization and better development of the left temporal lobe in musicians, which in turn facilitates cognitive processing mediated by that specific brain area, that is, verbal memory.

In another study conducted out of the University of Toronto and reported in journal Psychological Science, a team led by Dr. E. Glenn Schellenberg examined the effect of extra-curricular activities on the intellectual and social development of six year old children. A group of 144 children were assigned randomly to one of four activities: keyboard lessons, voice lessons, drama lessons, or no lessons. Two types of music lessons were offered in order to be able to generalize the results, while the groups receiving drama lessons or no lessons were considered control groups. The activities were provided for one year.

The participating children were given IQ test before and after the lessons. The result of this study revealed that increases in IQ from pre-to post-test were larger in the music groups than in the two others. Generally these increases occurred across IQ subtests, index scores, and academic achievement. Children in the drama group also exhibited improvements pre-to post-test, but in the area of adaptive social behavior, an area that did not change among children who received music lessons.

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