14 DAY TRIAL // The conclusions of a new scientific investigation would appear to suggest that the brains of infants are very plastic in their response to music. Exposure to interactive music classes at the age of 1 was found to have beneficial effects on the young one's mental abilities.
Babies who participated in these classes with their parents were able to communicate better, exhibited earlier, more sophisticated neural responses to music, and smiled more than peers who did not attend.
“Our results suggest that the infant brain might be particularly plastic with regard to musical exposure,” explains the director of the McMaster University Institute for Music and the Mind, Laurel Trainor, PhD. Researchers here conducted the study, PsychCentral reports.
The team says that early exposure to sounds made infants more sensitive to the intrinsic pitch structure of music, and more likely to detect it. The kids also responded poorly when they heard a version of a piano song that was played out-of-key, as opposed to the good responses they produced to the in-tune version.