Music Lessons Help with Memory

Kid musicians remember better than their non-musical counterparts.

By Thomas Sexton, published on August 01, 2003

Keeping your kids in music lessons may be more beneficial than you thought. According to a recent study, children with regular music training have better verbal memories than those who don't play an instrument, and this advantage seems to last even after the training is discontinued.

Researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong studied 90 boys ages six to 15. Of the group, half had music training both from individual lessons and participation in their schools' string orchestras. When tested for verbal memory, the young musicians performed significantly better than their non-musical peers. No such difference was seen in tests of visual memory.

Researchers, led by Agnes S. Chan, Ph.D., believe that this relationship is due to the fact that both music and verbal memory are centered in the left brain. The music training may have served as a type of exercise for the brain, allowing it to perform better in other, related tasks.

In a follow-up memory test a year later, researchers found that students who had discontinued their music training continued to perform better than those who had never taken lessons in the first place, though their verbal memories appeared to level off after they quit.

The study was published in the journal Neuropsychology.