overview: Beginners who took piano lessons one hour a week for 11 weeks showed improvements in auditory and visual processing. In addition, music training has helped improve mood and reduce symptoms of stress and anxiety.
sauce: University of Bath
A new study published by researchers at the University of Bath shows that learning to play an instrument has a positive impact on the brain’s ability to process sight and sound, and how it can reduce moods. It also shows how useful it is to lift.
Publication of research results in academic journals nature scientific reportthe team behind the study found that beginners who took piano lessons for as little as one hour a week for 11 weeks reported significant improvements in recognizing audiovisual changes in their environment, and reported significant improvements in reducing depression, stress, and anxiety. This indicates that the number of reported cases is low.
In a randomized controlled study, 31 adults were assigned to either music training, music listening, or control groups. Individuals with no previous musical experience or training were instructed to complete weekly 1-hour sessions. While the intervention group played music, the control group listened to music and used their time to do homework.
Researchers found that within just a few weeks of starting lessons*, people’s ability to process multi-sensory information, such as sight and hearing, improved. Improved “multisensory processes” benefit nearly every activity we participate in, from driving a car and crossing the road to finding someone in a crowd or watching TV.
These multisensory improvements extended beyond musical abilities. Music training made people’s audiovisual processing more accurate across other tasks. Those who had taken piano lessons showed greater accuracy in a test in which participants were asked to determine whether sound and visual “events” occurred simultaneously.
This was true for both simple displays that showed flashes and beeps, and more complex ones that showed who was speaking. Such fine-tuning of individual cognitive performance was not present in music-listening groups (where participants listened to the same music played by the music group), or non-music groups (where members studied or read). I did.
Furthermore, the findings went beyond cognitive improvements, showing that participants had lower scores for depression, anxiety, and stress after training compared to pre-training. The authors suggest that music training may be beneficial for people with mental health problems, and further research is currently underway to validate this.
Dr. Karin Petrini, a cognitive psychologist and music expert at the University of Bath’s Department of Psychology, explains: Short-term music learning can affect our cognitive abilities.
“Learning to play an instrument like the piano is a complex task. Musicians must read scores, generate movements, and monitor auditory and tactile feedback to coordinate subsequent movements. Science In layman’s terms, this process combines visual and auditory cues, resulting in an individual’s multisensory training.
“Our findings suggest that even in adulthood, when brain plasticity is reduced, there is a significant, positive impact on how the brain processes audiovisual information.”
About this music and neuroscience research news
author: Chris Melvin
sauce: University of Bath
contact: Chris Melvin – University of Bath
image: image is public domain
Original research: open access.
“RCT study showing that several weeks of music lessons enhance audiovisual temporal processing,” Karin Petrini et al. scientific report
overview
RCT Study Shows Weeks of Music Lessons Enhance Audiovisual Temporal Processing
See also
Music is multisensory and emotional in nature, and musicians have enhanced detection of audiovisual temporal discrepancies and emotional recognition compared with non-musicians.
However, it remains unclear whether musical training produces these enhanced abilities, or whether they are innate to musicians.
Thirty-one adult participants were randomly assigned to a music training group, a music listening group, or a control group, and all completed 1-hour weekly sessions for 11 weeks.
The music training group received piano training, the music listening group listened to the same music, and the control group did homework.
Audiovisual temporal discrepancy, facial expression recognition, autistic traits, depression, anxiety, stress and mood measurements were completed and compared from beginning to end of training.
ANOVA results revealed that only the music training group showed significant improvement in detecting audiovisual temporal discrepancies compared to the other groups for both stimuli (flash beeps and facial voices). I was.
However, music training did not improve emotion recognition from facial expressions compared to controls, but it did reduce levels of depression, stress, and anxiety compared to baseline.
This RCT study provides the first evidence of a causal effect of music training on improved audiovisual perception across the musical domain.
