Here’s a new study done on the impact of music during childhood, showing that it extends even into adult years. It was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, entitled:
A Little Goes a Long Way: How the Adult Brain Is Shaped by Musical Training in Childhood
Excerpts:
Playing a musical instrument changes the anatomy and function of the brain. But do these changes persist after music training stops?
… We show that adults who received formal music instruction as children have more robust brainstem responses to sound
than peers who never participated in music lessons and that the magnitude of the response correlates with how recently training ceased.
Our results suggest that neural changes accompanying musical training during childhood are retained in adulthood.
And here’s an article written on the same subject:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/early-music-lessons-have-longtime-benefits/
Quote:
Now Ms. Parbery-Clark and her colleagues can look at recordings of the brain’s electrical detection of sounds, and they can see the musically trained brains producing different — and stronger — responses. “Now I have more proof, tangible proof, music is really doing something,†she told me. “One of my lab mates can look at the computer and say, ‘Oh, you’re recording from a musician!’ â€