5 Year Project by Antonio Damasio to Look at Music and Child Brain Development

Famed neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and associates at USC will follow children for 5 years -- during the period between roughly the ages of 6 years old up to 12 years old -- in order to qualify and quantify the effects of high intensity music training on brain development.

Childhood music training has been linked to superior language skills, better math skills, and enhanced creativity. The study described in the article below should add significant information in relationship to those questions.

Researchers at USC Brain and Creativity Institute will explore the effects of intense music training on cognitive development...The five-year research project, Effects of Early Childhood Musical Training on Brain and Cognitive Development, will offer USC researchers an important opportunity to provide new insights and add rigorous data to an emerging discussion about the role of early music engagement in learning and brain function.

Starting when the children are between the age of 6 and 7, to ages 11 and 12, the researchers will use standard psychological assessments and advanced brain imaging techniques to track brain, emotional and social development. The group of children involved in the YOLA at HOLA program will be compared to a control group of children matched in age, socio-economic status and cognitive abilities, but with no musical training.

All children will be followed for five consecutive years, providing a rare chance for researchers to discover the effects of musical training on emotional, social and cognitive aspects of development as they actually occur, rather than inferring later-life effects. The USC Brain and Creativity Institute team began working with YOLA at HOLA students in September 2012. _NeuroscienceNews

The young human brain passes through developmental windows -- or critical periods of development -- when specific brain plasticity leading to the ability to learn particular skills becomes optimal. After these windows for specific cognitive skills are closed, it is more difficult for the child to develop those skills to a mastery level.

This is true not only for musical skills, but for foreign language skills -- and probably for some cognitive skills that lead to later mastery of some forms of higher mathematics.

The early and middle childhood years are quite precious in terms of fortifying the child's brain for meeting the difficult challenges he will meet in the future. Modern societies typically squander these early years -- despite what is already known about critical windows of development.

The truly explosive knowledge regarding developmental windows of opportunity is likely yet to be discovered.

Native Differences in Ability and an Integrated Curriculum

The ideal curriculum for the young child would be both open and integrated. An integrated curriculum ties the various fields of learning together, acknowledging the related patterns of brain activity in areas such as music, math, and science.

Music, science, and math go hand in hand. This is a natural combination for children. As we think about the integrated curriculum, it is important to remember all of the educational possibilities of weaving music, science, and mathematics throughout children’s experiences and all parts of the classroom environment (Scholastic Early Childhood Today, 2003). Music and rhythm are a vital part of human culture. The integration of music into the general curriculum encourages students to become actively involved in their learning. For example, the rhythm, meter, measure, and pattern of familiar lyrics can help develop math and science skills while enhancing many other aspects of the curriculum (Rothenberg, 1996).

Music can be a real asset when it comes to teaching math. “Music is filled with patterns and that’s what math is really about. You’re not going to explain the intricacies of notes and scales to a three-year-old, but exposing a child to music now will help him learn these concepts later” (Gill, 1998, p. 40). _Education

Integrating different types of learning which exercise similar brain networks, within the curriculum, can provide complementary pre-verbal cognitive perspectives which may be difficult to achieve otherwise.

But the curriculum must also be open to integrating more and different skills and knowledge areas as windows for critical learning periods open and close. By a certain point in development, it should be clear whether the child possesses special interests or particular ability or skills potential. The curriculum is integrated, but open to special circumstances and motivations.

Different children possess varying innate potential for development in the diverse fields of study and over a wide range of skills and competencies. While it is true that smart practise is crucial for mastery of skills and knowledge, it is also true that starting with a higher innate potential allows for the possibility of a higher level of mastery, with well-directed practise.

In terms of music, for example, we find that males overwhelmingly dominate the list of the 100 greatest classical composers. This is also true for the list of 10 greatest violinists of all time. You will also find a powerful male dominance revealed in the list of the top 50 jazz musicians of all time. The handful of females who make it into the top 50 jazz musicians list, tend to be vocalists.

As far as mathematics is concerned, there has not been a female Fields medal winner. The Fields Medal is given to mathematicians who are considered to advance the field the most.

In science, the Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded almost exclusively to men, with Marie Curie sharing the award in 1903 with Antoine Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie.

This male - female comparison of historical elite achievement in music, mathematics, and science, is meant only to demonstrate the likelihood of a sex related difference in innate ability at the elite levels, in those areas. The differences of innate strengths in these areas are distributed normally in both the male and the female populations, with the elite tail of the male distribution extending further to the right than the elite tail of the female distribution.

Other than for the elite tails, there is considerable overlap in ability in music, math, and science for males and females. In other words, the way is relatively equally open to mastery in those fields for large numbers of males and females.

For most dangerous children, early training in a broad range of general competencies will lead to adolescents with multiple skills which can be put to use in several ways to both provide income, and to pursue further mastery in special areas which may most interest individual dangerous children.

Musical Prodigies in Diapers? Science and Early Music Training

A recent study published in Developmental Science suggests that early training in active "participitory" musical experience boosts a six month old's communications and social skills.

We found that random assignment to 6 months of active participatory musical experience beginning at 6 months of age accelerates acquisition of culture-specific knowledge of Western tonality in comparison to a similar amount of passive exposure to music. Furthermore, infants assigned to the active musical experience showed superior development of prelinguistic communicative gestures and social behaviour compared to infants assigned to the passive musical experience. These results indicate that (1) infants can engage in meaningful musical training when appropriate pedagogical approaches are used, (2) active musical participation in infancy enhances culture-specific musical acquisition, and (3) active musical participation in infancy impacts social and communication development. _Developmental Science (abstract)

Six months has always been considered too early to begin musical training for infants. But if, in fact, the infant brain is particularly "plastic" to musical training at, or near, the age of six months, it may someday be seen as a sign of parental neglect to deprive infants of active participatory musical training!

More:

The researchers describe a six-month experiment featuring 34 infants and their parents. The babies’ average age at the time of the first session was six and one-half months; the last week of classes occurred around their first birthday. Twenty of the infants and their parents participated in weekly, hour-long interactive music classes, which utilized the well-known Suzuki method.

“Two teachers worked with the parents and infants to build a repertoire of lullabies, action songs and nursery rhymes,” the researchers write. “Parents were encouraged to use the curriculum CD at home and to repeat the songs and rhymes daily.”

The other 14 infants and their parents enrolled in passive music classes, where they listened to “a rotating series of recordings from the popular Baby Einstein series” while playing together with balls, blocks or books. After six months, those who took part in the active music lessons demonstrated a preference for tonal over atonal music—a pattern not found in the passive group. In addition, the researchers found “significantly larger and/or earlier responses” to piano tones in the brains of the babies who took active lessons.

But the benefits of this training went far beyond early indications of music appreciation.

“After participation in active music classes, infants showed much lower levels of distress when confronted with novel stimuli than after participation in passive music classes,” the researchers report. All the babies smiled and laughed less as they aged during the experiment, but the fall-off was greater among the passive listeners.

Communication skills were also positively affected. “Use of gestures increased greatly between six and 12 months of age,” the researchers note, “but increased more so for those in the active compared to the passive music classes.”

Trainor and her colleagues do not view these developments as isolated. “Positive social interactions between infants and parents likely lead to better communication and earlier acquisition of communicative gestures, which in turn lead to more positive social interactions,” they write. _PSMag

It is important to emphasise that parental participation was key to the positive social and communication skills results obtained from the "active participatory" training group. Parent-child bonding was almost certainly enhanced as well.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of parental involvement in critical period training of children. If parents are too busy to help children take optimal advantage of developmental windows, it is unlikely that anyone else will take the necessary amount of care in such training opportunities.

If parents are there every step of the child's critical development and skills acquisition, the bonding of common experience and the building of trust as the child gains confidence and competence, will pay lifetime dividends for both parent and child.

Mastery of Music: Building One's Own

Master craftsmen are protective of the tools of their trade. They are often the proudest of the tools which they have made themselves. Tools that you have made, modified, and maintained yourself -- and tweaked just the way you like it -- can teach you more about a craft than almost anything else.

Very few graduates of government educational systems ever learn to master a craft. Practical skills and competencies have come to be viewed as inferior to politically correct knowledge du jour, and trendy didactic concepts of the day which are most highly valued by teachers and professors. In other words, most children are sent to schools for hours a day, years on end, and finish with little more than obsolete and erroneous "facts" -- and dozens of squandered opportunities to utilise limited windows of learning and development.

If you send your child to government schools, you had best face the fact that your work is cut out for you. If you are to compensate for the cruel failures and designed obsolescence which is built into the mass-production cookie-cutter system of government schooling which passes for "education" these days, you will need to put in a lot of time and effort to make sure your child does not become just another psychological neotenate. A perpetual adolescent of matchless incompetence, suited for nothing more than a basement existence playing video games, drinking beer, and secretly building a porn collection.

One of the best arts to teach a child -- a skill that keeps paying dividends through the years -- is the art of music, music-making, and building his own musical instruments. If the child learns to make a variety of musical instruments when young -- and is encouraged to experiment with variations on construction themes -- he is likely to get an early feeling of mastery in making interesting things.

The simplest musical instruments are the basic percussion instruments: sticks, rattles, table tops, simple drums, etc. But the art of handmade and homemade musical instrument making spans a wide range of skills and complexities, and is worth becoming acquainted with even if one is not assisting a child in learning skills mastery.

Dennis Havlena There are a number of individuals on the web who are willing to share their wide experience in the art of homemade musical instrument making. Here are some links that will help you approach a variety of projects:

How to make Highland pipes from PVC pipe

Construct pipe bags from naugahyde/vinyl

Simple bellows for smallpipes & Uillean bagpipes

Build a bagpipe practice goose from a wine-box bladder

Make an extremely quiet chanter for pipe practice, from a tinwhistle _Dennis Havlena

Tinwhistle/Pennywhistle -- This is the instrument i started out with. It's easily constructed out of copper plumbing pipe or any other metal tubing you happen to have. You can build one to play in any key you want, especially those hard-to-find low or "in-between" keys.
Scottish small pipes -- A nice sounding bagpipe that is quiet enough to play indoors and with other instruments. These pipes are pitched in A, and use the same fingering as the Great Highland Bagpipe. The bores are straight and therefore easy to do with hobby-shop brass tubing. This is a challenging project but is eminently satisfying. (Note that the bellows, bag, and blowpipe sections are also applicable to any bellows-blown bagpipe. For example, when combined with David Daye's Famous "Penny-Chanter", you have all the makings for a home-built uilleann pipes practice set!)
Windchimes -- A musical instrument? You be the judge! :) These are fun to build, and very simple once you know how. Again, you can use just about any metal tubing you like.
Links to other instrument/building sites.

_Eric Reiswig

How to build a Les Paul Style Guitar the "HARD" way

How to build a Stratocaster Style Guitar the "HARD" way

How to build an "F" Style Mandolin

How to build an Banjo

_John Fisher

There are instructional websites, videos, and tutorials on instrument-making which range from the extremely simple to the exceedingly complex and sophisticated. For children, it is best to begin with the very basics as soon as the child shows interest or aptitude. Some children will shoot ahead and beg for more. Others may begin to get bored quickly. Such differing reactions should assist you in planning your next move.

When the child finds a project that captivates him, he is taking the early steps toward mastery of at least one small skill. It is good to acquaint the child with the feeling of mastery as early as possible, combined with the feeling of satisfaction in a job well done.

Approaching a Curriculum for The Dangerous Child

The dangerous child is a child who is self-motivated, and resistant to outside coercion. He is in many ways the opposite of the modern psychological neotenate -- the lifelong incompetent adolescent -- which schools are currently spitting out into the public ways by the gross.

Dangerous children enter into their education quite early in life, and never truly exit the process. It should be clear to all educated people that children need to learn multiple languages at a relatively young age, to encourage a more powerful brain development. It should also be clear that besides being exposed to music, children should receive some type of musical training at a fairly early age. And it is also highly probable that children could benefit from early childhood foundational training in mathematics.

All three of those crucial early childhood educational topics could be easily incorporated into a normal playful upbringing, without the need for expensive private teachers or institutional enrollment.

The human mind is instinctively primed for language, music, and probably mathematics. The developmental windows for those areas open up relatively early in life -- although each child is different and should be approached as an individual when planning and unfolding his curricula.

The younger the child, the more crucial the aspect of play. Play is incorporated in Montessori education, in Waldorf education, and in most other forms of effective alternative curricula of early childhood. But the sheer vast breadth of play has hardly been explored in this regard.

The foundations of music, maths, and multi-lingual language learning cause changes in brain development which permit a higher level of learning at an earlier age, than would otherwise be the case. The more skillfully the training can be enmeshed in play, the earlier the foundation building can take place in an intentional manner. But the play must be real, and not "pretend play." Children can generally tell the difference through non-verbal cues. Don't be a parental putz. Let your inner playful child emerge, it will help both you and your child.

Besides music, language, and maths, there are a number of other foundational beginnings which need to be laid, if one is to take advantage of the opening of the critical developmental windows in the child's brain. But these other areas are less well known to modern neuroscience or early education, and should be discussed discreetly, between responsible and qualified practitioners and serious parents and prospective parents.

As in the Garcia curriculum, the dangerous child will be trained in areas practical, philosophical, artistic, and technological. As in the Robinson curriculum, by the time the child is 16, he will be well prepared for advanced college-level work in a number of areas -- particularly math, science, and engineering.

But in addition, by the time a dangerous child reaches the age of 16 to 18, he will be able to financially support himself in the world at least 3 different ways. He will already have a significant nest egg saved, and will have several ideas for lucrative enterprises reasonably well planned. And that will be just the beginning of whole-life education which by then will be almost entirely within the hands of the dangerous child himself.

Ridiculous!, you may say. And judging by the potential of virtually every childhood curriculum you have been exposed to, you would be absolutely correct. But for those with the fortitude to work their way through the materials to be provided in future entries to this series, it is likely that you will begin to see how the threads can come together.