WHY DOES MY BABY NEED MUSIC?
Music Stimulates Early Brain Development
“In the early 1980’s, Howard Gardner of Harvard wrote Frames of Mind…He cites research showing that infants as young as two months are able to match the pitch, loudness, and melodic contour of their mother’s songs, and at four months they can match rhythmic structure as well. Science has found that infants are predisposed to these aspects of music – far more than they are to the core properties of speech – and that they engage in sound play that clearly exhibits creative properties.” (pp. 178-179).
“Why does the Mozart Effect work? Tracing neurological development through childhood provides clues to this quest…until a major leap takes place in brain growth in the elementary school years, learning occurs through movement and quick emotional associations; by age two, the brain has begun to fuse with the body via marching, dancing, and developing a sense of physical rhythm…A great spurt of neural integration occurs between ages seven and nine. The more music children are exposed to before they enter school, the more deeply this stage of neural coding will assist them throughout their lives.” (pp. 191-192).
– Campbell, Don. The Mozart Effect:Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind and Unlock the Creative Spirit. Avon Books, 1997.
“Eight to nine month old infants learned to respond to melody changes in music. Their pattern of response was the same as adults, indicating that brain specialization’s for the processing of musical contour are present at a very early age.”
– Balaban, M.T., Anderson, L.M., & Wisniewski, A.B. “Lateral Asymmetries in Infant Melody Perception.” Developmental Psychology. 1998, vol. 34, no. 1, 39-48.
“Infants receive music ‘lessons’ beginning immediately after birth, from parents and others. These lessons are in the form of not only music but also of language. Although music and language are normally viewed as quite separate, they actually have fundamental commonalties, particularly as practiced to infants…Overall, it now seems clear that there is little distinction between infant-directed speech and song, that infants react to the prosodic and musical qualities of the two forms of vocal communication, and that the earliest of language lessons are in no sense merely linguistic. These conclusions support the view that the human comes ‘equipped’ with both language and music competencies.”
–“The Earliest Music Lessons.” Musica Research Notes, vol. 2, issue 1, Spring 1995. www.musica.uci.edu.
“In a Brigham Young University study, babies in a newborn intensive care unit (NICU) showed significant improvements when they were exposed to four days of a simple music medicine regimen. As they listened to the music, the ‘lullaby babies’ had lower heart rates, increased oxygen saturation and reduced stress behaviors. They also showed long-term progress and were healthy enough to leave the hospital an average of nearly three days earlier than babies in the control group…. Rosalie Pratt, a BYU music professor, believes that ‘as early as possible,’ parents should implement home-based music programs.”
–Brigham Young University news release, August 17, 1998. www.byu.edu.
“Sandra Trehub and her colleagues at the University of Toronto have studied the perception of melodies as part of a systematic program of research on the musical capabilities of infants. They have found that indeed infants 8-11 months of age do perceive and remember melodic contour…Infants have surprising adult-like capabilities in the way that they perceive and attend to musical stimuli.”
“The Musical Infant.” www.pionet.net.