Does music influence a child’s capacity to learn? While not a scientifically proven fact, there are several studies to show that yes, music does positively affect a child’s cognitive capabilities.

When learning a song or a musical instrument, the child exercise a number of abilities. First are the sensory skills, ostensibly the listening faculty but also to some extent the visual and tactile faculties, as well, as the student reads through notes and feels through his instrument.

Then there is also manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination: musical instruments frequently require the use of two hands (and sometimes the feet as well).

Music improves spatial-temporal reasoning, the neurological processes needed to understand mathematics. This has a lot to do with the sense of timing and rhythm that is essential to music. Is it any wonder that many great scientists and mathematicians (Albert Einstein, for example) also play a musical instrument as a hobby?

And finally, music can also help improve a child’s emotional quotient. Music is not just a technical discipline but an emotive exercise as well. One learns to “feel” music until it becomes an instinctive response.

All this is supported by studies, most notable being J.M. Flohr and D.C. Miller’s research on children’s brain waves based on EEG (electroencephalogram) in 1999. The study showed an increase of activity in the brain’s temporal region, which is the auditory center responsible for transferring sound and music

Human brainwave activity also increases when listening to music of particular volume. They found that music helps to improve cognitive functioning, increase the size of brain neurons, and assist a person to achieve higher mental performance. According to Bower (2004), children who listen to music show average IQ increases of about 7.0 points each school year.