Benefits Of Music Therapy and Education
Benefit Of Music Therapy
Benefits of Music Therapy
Music therapy uses music to promote positive changes in the wellbeing of an individual. The therapeutic benefits of music have been known and harnessed since ancient times. However, music therapy in modern times dates back to the World Wars when music was used in hospitals in the rehabilitation and recovery of soldiers who had suffered physical or emotional trauma. The University of Kansas was the first University in the United States to offer a degree program in music therapy in 1944.
Music is universal and connects across language barriers. Music has an inherent ability to generate an emotional response in the listener. Music is known to reduce stress thereby producing related benefits such as lower blood pressure, improved respiration, reduced heart rate, better cardiac performance and reduced tension in muscles.
Music encourages verbal as well as non verbal communication and promotes social interaction and relatedness.
Benefits of Music Education
Three Powerful Reasons why children benefit from music education as part of their Curriculum, especially at a young age. There has been plenty of research done about the benefits of music education for young children.
1. Playing music improves concentration, memory and self-expression
One two-year study in Switzerland run with 1200 children in more than 50 classes scientifically showed how playing music improved children’s reading and verbal skills through improving concentration, memory and self-expression.
Younger children who had three more music classes per week and three fewer main curriculums made rapid developments in speech and learned to read with greater ease.
Other effects revealed by the study showed that children learned to like each other more, enjoyed school more (as did their teachers) and were less stressed during the various tests, indicating they were better able to handle performance pressure.
2. Playing music improves the ability to think
Ongoing research at the University of California-Irvine and the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh demonstrate that learning and playing music builds or modifies neural pathways related to spatial reasoning tasks, which are crucial for higher brain functions like complex math’s, chess and science.
The first studies showed that listening to a Mozart sonata temporarily improved a child’s spatial abilities. Further studies compared children who had computer lessons, children who had singing lessons, children who learned music using a Keyboard and children who did nothing additional. The children who had had the Music classes scored significantly higher – up to 35% higher – than the children did Who had computer classes or did nothing additional.
3. Learning music helps under-performing students to improve
For information about music effect, you can check article at music effect for brain and mood.