How Music Inspires Your Baby's Brain
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Orchestrate a lifetime of learning for your child through music.
Bring on the Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven! Many experts believe that when babies and young children listen to classical music it stimulates their brains in a way that prepares them to do better on certain types of tasks.
How Music Affects the Brain
"Music seems to prime our brains for certain kinds of thinking," says Dr. Diane Bales, a University of Georgia professor. "The classical music pathways in our brain are similar to the pathways we use for spatial reasoning-the ability to understand relationships between objects, such as the pieces in a puzzle. When we listen to classical music, the spatial pathways are 'turned on' and ready to be used."
The complexity of classical music is what primes the brain so listening to country or rock won't have the same effect. Still, enjoying tunes of any kind helps build music-related pathways in the brain and can have positive effects on mood.
Grow Baby's Brain with Song
Nurturing your child's love of music from infancy may help you bond and could even set the stage for early music instruction (by age 4 or 5), which promotes long-term improvements in spatial skills. Here's what you can do now:
- Play music for your baby. Expose her to a wide variety of selections.
- Sing to your baby. Hearing your voice helps him with language skills. Babies also pick up on moods from music so use lullabies to soothe and upbeat songs when you want to have fun together.
- Sing with your child. As your baby gets older, setting words to music will help her brain learn them more quickly and retain them longer.
How do you know if the music is making a difference for your baby? Just watch her!
"Babies responding to music will move to the music, perhaps clap their hands, smile and look happy," says Dr. Frances Rauscher, professor at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and coauthor of the "Mozart Effect" study. And it's an easy way to tell you're adding a positive note to your baby's development.