- Hello and welcome to an Ohio Learns 360 Family Webinar.

I'm Amy Juravich from WOSU Public Media.

We're here today to discuss the impact music can have on learning.

Research shows that music can have a powerful impact on reading, memory, and attention, but does music actually make you smarter?

Joining us for this discussion is Dr. Assal Habibi.

She is Associate Research Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern California.

Dr. Habibi, welcome.

- Thank you, glad to be here.

Thanks for having me.

- And someone joining us for this webinar might not have the next Beethoven or Beyonce in their house, but research shows that there is a connection between music and education and doing better in school.

So does music actually make you smarter?

- Well, that's a really good question, and so many levels to answer it.

And how do we define smart?

Define smart as academic achievement, doing better at school in terms of homework and math and science?

Being smart in terms of being emotionally smart, like how you can connect with friends and family and your community?

Being smart in relation to have better executive function skills?

So this is something that we have been looking at that's been kind of the base of my research for the past 10 years or so, following children as they learn music.

And overall, and we can go into more details specific to each study, but what we have showed is that, yes, learning to play music, a musical instrument, whether you're learning how to sing or you learn how to play an instrument, has a positive impact on all these domains of what we call smart.

So both in terms of academic achievement, in terms of executive control and attention, and also in terms of empathy and compassion and prosocial behavior as the skills that we want children to have.

- Now, do you have to be good at playing the instrument?

Or is it just simply the exposure to the music?

- I think not...

I mean, I'm sure that there's a relationship between the quality of production, but what we have looked at is simply children learning how to play an instrument and how to play an instrument with others.

So maybe just to give a little of the context of the study that I'm talking about, we have been following children when they were about six years old right before starting elementary school and systematically followed them as they went through their school, but also they have enrolled into a music program.

This is a music program that is called Youth Orchestra Los Angeles.

YOLA is the education kind of arm of the LA Philharmonic.

And what we have observed is that these children go to this music program.

It's really not what we know as this typical conservatory, very high intensity training.

It's a very fun music program.

They all learn to play instruments, but they learn how to be together, how to form a community, and really just the act of picking up an instrument, learning how to read notes, translate these abstract symbols into meaningful sounds, and being able to control your body movement and motor system to correct the sound that comes out of your instrument, to pay attention to others to see what they are doing, to listen carefully, all of that, it seems that they're contributing factors in terms of what makes one be a better musician, but also contributing factors to these skills that we think you don't necessarily go to music lessons to learn, to be more attentive, to have better memory, to have a better executive network or planning and decision making, but we see positive impact in all of these domains.

- And you mentioned that your work with the youth orchestra, you are starting following the kids at six years old.

How long are you planning on staying with them?

I mean this is still an active study, right?

- This is an active study, although we are not bringing them as frequently.

So the first seven years of their life, they came to my lab every year with their parents.

We did a very comprehensive battery of testing that also included brain imaging because we wanted to know not only what are the behavioral outcomes of their behavior, but what is it about the changes in the brain, the neuroplasticity underlying change in behavior, whether we see changes in the emotion network of the brain, or the language network of the brain, or the attention and memory and executive network of the brain?

So the first six to seven years, we had them come in every year and did about two days of full testing.

And I'm very grateful for all the parents who put the time and effort to help us gather this very rich dataset.

Since then now, we are kind of checking in with them once a year to see where they are, whether they're continuing with their music.

Our plan is to do another round of data collection when these students are at early high school years just to see, because for example, one of the impacts that we see that may be interesting for your audience is impact and positive impact of music learning on what typically in the family setting we'd call impulse control, being able to inhibit yourself from doing something, like to something immediately for a better reward in the future, showing up to class so you learn something, practicing so you can then show the piece that you practiced and the piece that you can play.

So all of that is kind of under this category of impulse control and inhibition.

And what we've shown is that children who have had music training in our music group tend to do better on some of these tasks of inhibition and impulse control the way we measure it at the lab.

And the way we measure it at the lab is through games, similar to maybe some of you have heard about the marshmallow task.

So kind of a very similar setting of, do you want a reward, an immediate reward now, or can you wait for a better reward in the future?

And we have shown that children in the music group tend to wait more and longer for a better reward.

But our question is, does this translate to even better inhibition skills when the reality of life becomes more important, when you are in high school and you have a choice to go hang out with your friends and skip class versus showing up to class and getting better grades?

So our plan of looking at these children in early adolescence is to see whether we see translation of some of these benefits into adolescence and adulthood.

- Okay, so your research focuses on the influence of music on health and development, that's what you're just talking about and how- - [Dr. Habibi] Absolutely, yeah.

- And how music can shape the brain during childhood.

Are you following any students who are not in the youth orchestra program?

Or are you just looking for- - [Dr. Habibi] Yes.

- Oh, okay.

- Very great question, You are thinking scientifically, because when we look at developmental in general, every child gets better with their memory and language and reading skills.

So at the onset of this study, we had three groups, a group of children who were enrolled in the music program.

We had a control group of active, those were children who were involved in sports.

So these were community sports program like a soccer or a swimming program.

And then we also had a passive control group of children who were not doing any systematic after school enrichment program.

Or if they did it, it would be very minimal, not as frequent and intense as the other two groups.

Now, this was not a randomized control trial, like we did not tell them, "If you're in the music group you can never do sports," because that's not ethical in terms of child development.

But we monitored them very closely to make sure the number of hours they're in music for the music group, for example, was dominant, or the number of hours they did sports for the sports group was dominant.

Most of the changes that we have seen are true between the music group and sports and the control group.

So for example, those inhibition skills, changes that we see in the kind of recruitment of the brain areas that are responsible for decision making were true between when we compared the music to passive control and music to sports.

The differences were smaller when we compared music to sports, and I think part of that is coming from this, child development is a wholesome activity.

So it's not that sports is better than music.

A child probably needs all interaction and all kind of exposure to sports, to arts, to different types of arts.

So we saw some benefits that were just exclusive to music training.

For example, language development, kind of like speech processing.

But there were also, for example, development of like social skills like empathy and prosocial behavior that we also observed in the children who were in the sports program.

- And so you're mentioning that you're seeing progress when it comes to emotional things and impulse control with the music group.

Are you seeing anything when it actually comes to the academics?

Are students who are involved in music reading at a higher level or doing math better than others?

- Yeah, so because they were going through different schools, we don't have the same kind of assessment of their academic achievement in relation to, for example, they were not all at the same school, so we wouldn't see all of them doing the same math test or English test.

However, we have kind of gathered information from their families and their teachers separately, nothing really measuring directly academic achievement, but we have had evidence from their parents and families that they tend to fit better at school, they attend more classes in their academic programs, so the children who are in the music program tend to be more kind of connected with their schooling and their classes.

And we are planning to, now that they're taking standardized tests, as they get older, to kind of look at a unifying measure to see whether music training had an impact on it.

- And are you personally, are you musically trained?

And is a part of the reason you're doing this study because you have the music brain?

- Yeah.

- Yeah?

- Research.

Research is research (indistinct).

Yes, I was trained as a classical pianist, and when I went to graduate school and did my doctoral degree, I was very interested, because to me, music training brought a community for me, friends that I could play music with.

There was a space in it that helped emotion regulation and being able to kind of process things that other things did not allow for it.

And also really I think the discipline that one learns from being a musician and having to really practice and dedicate hours and kind of you have to go measure by measure until you can get a whole piece done really helped me as a researcher.

So I was always interested to at least provide the scientific link that music education, similar to any type of art education, has to be available to any child, and they could try it and see what they like.

And that's, as we talked at the beginning, not everybody is a Beethoven or a Beyonce, but being able to appreciate music and have that space to connect with others through music.

- Now, the research you've been doing with the youth orchestra, I'm assuming this is like an afterschool program, the parents take the kids to it, it's not associated with the school.

Do you have any research or insights into if maybe it's not in the capacity of a parent to do a dedicated afterschool program like that, what about just having music education classes in your elementary school, or having the opportunity to play in the band or strings at a young age?

I'm sure that helps as well.

- Absolutely, and that's been one of the goals of this research, to show that in relation to like policymakers about education and education curricula that, see, these afterschool programs are really powerful in teaching students the skills that we want to teach them.

We want our children to be compassionate, empathic, have better impulse control, have better executive network.

As a result of this first larger study that we did, we actually have recently designed a new study that looked at a series of schools that offer music education as part of their regular schooling program.

And we are comparing that to schools that do not and wanting to really show that even as part of regular school education, if music is provided, that still makes a difference, and kind of push for availability of music education as part of our regular curriculum.

Like, I am obviously a scientist and trained in science, but I do think that being able to think differently about things, like creative thinking given when it comes to science and problem solving, music learning really allows for that.

And if we just throw out music as kind of this thing that is not important when budget cuts come around, I think it's shortsighted given all the evidence of positive impact that we see with music.

And even that, I mean, I think some of the parents, I get a lot of questions in terms of like, "What I can do in terms of music training with my child?

We don't have time or resources.

Our school doesn't offer music."

And I kind of always want to emphasize that playing music is a human trait that's been with us in our evolution for many years.

Playing music does not necessarily mean having to be trained at a conservatory.

If you are singing together with your child, if you have like a drum circle, if you just have family traditions or like singalongs, and you can have like a grandmother teaching a grandchild how to sing a song, these are all practices of music that can help engage a child with like pitch perception and rhythm perception and attention and listening.

So not to make the whole story very complicated, but even from early childhood, I believe we can provide such opportunities for children.

- Now, you just mentioned this.

Music education, especially at the elementary level, tends to be something that easily gets put on the chopping block.

Whenever someone starts talking about budget cuts, they talk about elementary music education, and they keep the band in orchestra in the high school.

But are you seeing that still?

'Cause there's been more and more research over the years of the importance of music, so I feel like districts are trying to hold onto it.

Are you seeing that music in elementary schools, is it secure?

- I think there is a positive trajectory, and I'm hopeful to see.

For example, in California, just a few months ago, we voted on having to have music education as part of elementary school curriculum for every public school.

So there is more awareness and that bill, I mean that proposition, was brought up because of really 30 to 40 years of research in this domain.

Because just kind of like understanding that if you can learn how to have better attention and memory skills and how to work with others through something that is joyful like music, it almost feels that why not doing that?

We just have to invest at the beginning, obviously.

Music takes some investment, everybody needs an instrument.

But the model, for example, of these youth orchestras is that it's a group activity, so there is like one instructor and a few teacher assistants, but you can teach music to 30 kids at the same time in the same room.

And not only you teach them music, but you also teach them prosocial skills, cooperation and having to wait for another, and having to take turns.

I see some positive changes, at least in the school districts that I know of, that there has been awareness of the importance of music and more opportunities to incorporate that into our curriculum.

I hope that we can go back to that baseline that music education was part of the regular curriculum for every child.

And I also want to say that obviously high school and late adolescence is also important for its own trajectory of development, but neuroplasticity is really strong in early childhood.

Things that we can make a difference, so for example, some of the things we've seen with music learning in this group is enhancement of auditory skills.

Pitch perception, rhythm perception, and these kind of skills engage brain areas that are important for any auditory kind of activity.

This is language, this is speech, this is communication.

And if you can increase these abilities, like if you can tell, for example, from a communication if somebody is upset or if somebody is sad because you're better at prosody perception, it puts you higher in the trajectory of your development and success in society.

So I think awareness and mindfulness of like intervening at that young age when the brain is really ready for take changes is an important thing to consider.

- Well, and another thing to consider about music in elementary schools is that idea of recruitment and retention.

It's harder to convince, probably, I'm assuming, it's harder to convince a 13-year-old to pick up a violin for the very first time.

But if they held one when they were nine in fourth grade, then maybe they'll stick with it.

Are you seeing issues with recruitment and retention if it doesn't start at a young level?

- Not directly as you're asking, but I see that there is more dropouts when some of these kids tend to get older from the music program if they don't have a sense of belonging, because we've been surveying a lot of different music programs and to see over years how many students they can retain.

One unique thing about this youth orchestra, the YOLA program that we work with, is that they sort of create a community and I think that's one of the reason that they're very successful in retention and keeping the children in the program, because the program is so intense, they go four days a week, two hours a day, but it also is a place to be.

So they have a very high rate of keeping them.

But I see that across different programs.

Some programs tend to recruit children when they're like six or seven, but if they don't kind of create that sense of belonging, there is some dropouts around the ages that you're describing, 10, 12.

- Well, I didn't realize that.

Four days a week, two hours a day.

I mean, that's a lot.

Is it a program that's accessible for everyone?

Because I could see certain social and economical reasons that people, maybe parents aren't able to get their kids to a place for four days a week.

- Yeah, so a very good question.

Actually, the program is targeted and geared towards a lower socioeconomic status, so zip codes that typically do not get music education as part of their public schools, and families have to be around a certain income level to be able to enroll into the program.

So really providing this opportunity for children who would typically not get it.

They cannot afford going to a private music lesson.

And then they are located within community.

So there is some thoughtfulness around how to organize this so parents can just walk, pick their children up, and go to this program.

It's just like one, I mean, we live in Los Angeles, and transportation and transit is very complicated, but they mindfully recruit students that live within like five miles radius of the program, and the program has really grew.

So when we started with them in 2012, I think that was the beginning of their program early on, and they probably had 100 or so students in three different locations.

And now this program has grown to serving around 1,000 students in the city of Los Angeles.

- And I can imagine, you know, you're in California, but I'm sitting here in Ohio, you mentioned, you know, parents being able to walk to take their kids there, but there's a lot of more rural schools here in Ohio.

So that would be the importance of having music education in the school, 'cause, you know, the parents have the transportation to get them to school for the school day, but maybe they don't have the transportation to drive them an hour to a private lesson that's in the city or something like that.

- Absolutely, yeah, so this new study that I was mentioning that we are now working with, which has the in-school model, is exactly for the same reason, that if we can incorporate that music then maybe we can even get a larger number of students.

Maybe if we can just put it as an elective, a larger number of students or parents who can't typically go to a music program, given a job and demanding hours, then there'll be participation through their school program.

And I think we can, as parents and families, really advocate for that.

Even if there is a way of, like maybe just like an hour or two hours a week, so maybe just starting small and growing.

The model that I said four days a week, two hours a day is not the necessary ingredient to see these changes.

This is just a model of this program.

This was modeled after a method of music education called El Sistema that was developed in Venezuela.

And it's kind of a social intervention too to help children have ways of better social behavior.

But that doesn't necessarily mean everybody needs to get that.

I think in a school with a smaller number of students, we can have the insight to start small and then see where that takes us.

- And as a part of this webinar, families were able to submit questions in advance for our guest today, so we have a question from Becca, and Becca says, "My husband and I are both musicians.

He plays the drums and is in a band.

I played violin in high school and I learned guitar as an adult.

But my 10-year-old has no interest in music.

She says it's not her thing.

How do I get her to try out lessons to try something without pushing her away?"

- Well, a very good question, especially good coming from musicians.

There are two things that I think always about what keeps a child interested in music.

One is what type of music they're expected to play.

I think children would be more open to play music that they know, and I think we as adults can adjust our expectations.

So maybe a piece of classical music or rock music or jazz that we enjoy doesn't have the same level of emotional connection for the child.

So they can play what they hear on the radio, or their favorite video game tune, or the movie that they like to watch, because that is something that they emotionally connect with.

So really making it available of like, not limiting the type of music that they're playing, but something that they like and repertoires that they feel that they're emotionally connecting.

And then one other thing that I observed, especially with YOLA, is opportunities for performance and having children experience pride and a sense of accomplishment.

So the students in this program that I work with get a lot of opportunities for performance, and not necessarily because they are really, really at a level that like we think they're like musically so high that they should perform, but even the small amount that they know, there is a performance for them scheduled so their parents, their community can come and they feel a sense of accomplishment and pride that goes with playing music.

And I think that opportunity to really be praised and be recognized for the effort, not necessarily for the outcome of like how quality is good or bad, but for the effort that they're putting into this can give them motivation to continue.

And also playing with others.

I think I was a trained pianist, and I always say piano is a lonely instrument until you get very good at it.

Then people want to play with you or have you as a duet or accompanying.

But violin or any string instrument, they're excellent for having group exercises because at the beginning, you have to really emphasize that emotional and social aspect of music playing until one becomes advanced enough that you actually get a sense of reward for playing music itself.

So if you can like maybe pair your child with another person who's playing, another student who's playing an instrument, one plays a drum, the other plays a guitar, there's a play aspect into it that I think could be motivating.

- And do you have any experience with, you know, related to Becca's question, rather than picking up a musical instrument, if your child is not interested in that, maybe the idea of singing or joining a choir.

That could be a part of it too.

That's a different type of instrument, and it doesn't require, you know, you have it right there.

(laughs) - Yeah, no, I think choirs are an extremely powerful way to get children and individuals involved in music.

I think a lot of programs, actually, I see a lot of conservatory and music programs start children with choirs, and the singing is like having, as you said, instrument with you and carrying it with you.

It allows for the same kind of structure of learning rhythm and pitch and turn taking and controlling movements, so I think if there is a way to enroll a child in a choir and then maybe their interest piques.

Like, they see a pianist as part of the choir and they wanna play the piano.

Choirs are very powerful, community choirs are very powerful.

And even like pairing.

Like, maybe there is a community choir of older children and then like older adults, and one can just go and observe and understand the mechanism of that.

That's a very good way to get children involved in music.

- And another question that we had that was submitted in advance is from Jennifer.

Jennifer says, "Our elementary school only has a part-time music teacher, and band is only offered in the fifth grade.

So how can I help the program grow?

Is there anything that a parent can do to help?"

- I understand the realities of budgets and budget cuts, and I know that teachers and principals and really all educators work so hard and really with the limited resources that they have, but maybe as a parent, maybe organizing with other parents, kind of discussing the reality of research that is out there in support of music.

If there is maybe a direct link that needs to be drawn from, see, if children learn music, it also has impact in their social behavior, in their way that they interact with others, in their emotional state.

Kind of advocating for the need for music so music is not just seen as the fun time, but actually has some impact on other behavior.

That could be helpful if maybe a parent is a musician and can volunteer some hours to provide that.

But the way that we have been kind of, I've been talking with school educators and principals, is really providing the research and say, "Here are the changes that we see.

It's not only anecdotal, these are scientific studies that have been published in highly impactful scientific journals.

Not only do we see behavior change, but we actually see the biology of the brain changes.

You have this information based on that and the outcome you want to see in our students what adjustments one can do to make that happen."

- Yes, and I don't know, you know, the question that was submitted, I don't know why they only have a part-time music teacher versus a full-time, but the idea of the focus at school relying a lot on STEM, you know, science, technology, engineering, and math, especially in recent years there's been an a more intense focus on reading and math activities, and, you know, testing the students, making sure everyone is up to where they should be, especially in reading and math.

Are you seeing that the arts, music in particular, becomes a lower priority because of this emphasis on either STEM or the focus on the need for reading and math?

- Yeah, I'd say that trend, maybe started for us to see changes.

The first time I saw the word STEAM instead of STEM that has the additional A for arts in the spelling was about maybe five years ago of this recognition of art education being important and relevant.

And I think kind of really, I mean, we have looked at, in my data of music learning, specifically with language development and speech processing and perception of speech in noisy environment.

There is really good work that's been shown in relation to music training and reading abilities, especially for children with dyslexia, and how learning music can help.

So I think if we can just kind of connect the dots, there's a lot of information out there.

Time and resources are limited, but if we can use music as a way of strengthening some of the pathways in the brain that allows for even learning better math and science, I think that's a useful and insightful intervention to have early on.

- Yeah, and I feel like what you mentioned, that STEM being turned into STEAM in recent years is important and it shows that arts advocates are out there, and they're, you know, emphasizing to add that A in there.

But I also was reading, you know, that's a different way.

If your student is struggling with reading or math, sometimes turning it into an arts activity can help them learn it.

Have you seen that too?

- Absolutely, yeah, so I see that.

I know that there is music interventions, especially as I said in relation to dyslexia in schools that I've seen.

I mean, we know that music therapy can be even used for like speech reception and speech production for children who have had difficulty with communication.

So it has to be individualized.

And I think partly, I take responsibility as a scientific community of, it's our responsibility to also communicate what we find to educators.

And that's kind of not the traditional way for us to communicate.

We are used and trained to publish in science journals.

But I think as conversations like this today take more shape and we are more used to sharing our data, and I'm happy to send the link to my laboratory and all of our publications that are freely available on my website to your audience, more of these communication, more of sharing that information would allow people to make decisions in terms of including math and including music within the curriculum that is also math and science oriented.

- Another question that we had that was submitted in advance.

Rachel says that, "My kids are very busy.

There are so many activities to be a part of, and they want to try them all.

How much priority should I give to playing an instrument, keeping up with piano lessons or playing an instrument in school, versus the other activities?"

- Yeah, it'd be nice to have it all.

And I said, I mean, from the perspective of like child development, like it's a whole picture, so I'm not gonna say prioritize music over sports.

What I think is important, especially like I get this question of like, should I have my kids do arts, like visual arts versus theater versus music?

And I think just exposing your child to different forms of art or different types of music and then have them decide.

At some point they connect, at some point their personality and their emotional state says, "This is the thing that works for me."

And yeah, maybe a child starts on the piano and they just really do not like piano and they just pick up a clarinet, and clarinet is their thing.

So I know that parents are very busy and their time is very short and limited between jobs and family duties, but having also the flexibility to taking your child to different like performances.

Maybe you can just go to a community music performance that has jazz or another one that has country music or another one that has classical, and having that exposure for your children to see which one they like better, and then have flexibility to change that.

But I completely understand time is limited, especially they're like so busy at school.

I would say including music even a little bit of it is probably really powerful.

And as they get older, they can prioritize for themself what is important.

- And I'm not sure exactly how the pandemic impacted your research.

I'm sure it did 'cause it impacted everything.

But during the pandemic, the music was an outlet for many students.

You know, they had their instrument with them at home.

Are you seeing that continue the way that it helped students get through that troubled time?

- Yeah, that's a very good question and observation.

When the pandemic hit, we really didn't know how to continue the research because we bring children to our center and they go to their music school.

What we saw was very interesting because the ones who were in the music group continued the social relationships that they had with their friends through Zoom music playing sessions, and that was completely organic.

We did not ask them to do that.

But as we went and we do this like six month checkup with them, "How are you doing socially?

How are you doing emotionally?

What are the activities you are doing?"

What we observed was that the ones who have had music since childhood, since they were six, and by the time the pandemic hit they were around age 12-13, they used music as that toolbox to respond to the stress.

So one of the thoughts that I always have is that it'd be nice as a society if you could go wipe stress and poverty and all of that from every child's life, but that's not possible.

But what can we give them, these children, to respond to stresses better and to regulate their emotion?

And it was very nice to see that evidence of the ones who have had music as their background, as their foundation, they relied on music for kind of filling that gap of not really having social interaction, and they really came up with the ways of connecting with their friends from the music program through their music.

- Yeah, have you seen, or can you talk about how music helps with social skills?

You know, especially at the elementary age, some social skills were missed during those turbulent couple of years.

So you mentioned this way earlier in the conversation, but music does help with social skills?

- Yeah, so two things that we have looked at are what we call prosocial behavior, and these are behaviors like helping and sharing, and also empathy.

So in terms of prosocial behavior, we have showed in our data that children who play music and actually are better synchronized with other ones who are in music, so the more synchronized they are in their instrument, the more kind of in line with other instruments, they fit better in the orchestra, they tend to do better in tasks that measures helping and sharing.

And that's been replicated in many other studies.

Even if you measure people who are drumming together, the ones who are at a more synchronized level of drumming with others, they tend to be more kind of like cooperative towards one another.

So that's one aspect that we have shown.

The parents of children who have had music training reported to us that they were less aggressive and less hyperactive all through elementary years.

As their music training went up, the hyperactivity and aggression scores went down.

And then we also observed increasing empathy.

So being able to share emotional states of another person.

And if you think about a musician, especially if you're playing in a band or in a ensemble, you really have to in kind of get yourself in tune with the emotional state of the other people.

You can't just kind of play your own tune and not pay attention.

So we think all that mimicking and like mirroring that one does when you're playing with others, and you have to follow a conductor, and emotionally being in tune, really helps with understanding how to take emotional states of others into consideration and do better on tasks that involve empathy.

- And are you seeing those results with the empathy and the social skills right away?

Or is it over time?

- No, good question.

Usually these things, so what we see, the neuroplastic changes in the brain and the correlated behavior, the first changes we see are changes in the auditory system and sound perception, which makes sense because music is a sound-based stimuli.

So what we saw changing were auditory skills got better, language skills got better, communication skills got better after about a year of training.

For all the other skills that I talked about, executive network, impulse control, empathy, and prosocial behavior, it took about two years of training for us to begin seeing these differences that were significantly from a statistical perspective.

So the trends start moving, but we need some time for these kind of networks of the brain to change and kind of absorb the changes that come as a result of music training.

- Okay, so just a one-off time where, you know, some school districts do arts on rotations, so just having one nine weeks focused on music, maybe not enough?

(laughs) - No, I think the brain, especially at that young age, needs continuous and frequent practice of an event to change.

- And one other thing I did wanna ask you about, I was reading about the Mozart effect, so going a little bit even younger than the elementary school age, but even this like preschool and babies.

So the idea that listening to music can, listening to classical music can help show gains in development.

Could you explain the Mozart effect a little?

- Yeah, so that effect was reported in the late nineties, and it became really popular and there's been a lot of replication of this study, and it's not necessarily Mozart that does that.

It's really a music that you can emotionally connect with.

So if your family has different background music, kind of like traditional music that you listen to, if you are from another country which the music is important to you, what that study showed is that listening to music, especially for that study they did Mozart, has an ability to make you more attentive because it probably like wakes you up and it just kind of like makes you more alert.

So in children, in young children... And following listening to music, they had them do these tasks that involved like cognitive function and problem solving, and the ones who were in the music group compared to nothing did better.

But if you just compare music of Mozart to the music that you admire and you like to listen to, you'd probably see very similar impact.

So I guess my suggestion to parents of younger children is to have kind of presence of music at home.

I mean, as I said, music is part of our humanity.

We listen to music all the time.

So introducing your child to the music of your culture, to what is important to you, what you value, moving your child with music.

A lot of the mommy and me classes, it's just simple dance movement.

That teaches a child rhythm, like how to count, how to move to music in a kind of a rhythmic way.

So I think just having that awareness and presence of music at a young age at home really tunes our auditory and nervous system to pay attention to changes in the sound environment.

- And you talked about this before, but can you talk a little bit more about how being a musician can equip a child to deal with stress in a better way?

What about playing an instrument?

Is it that the instrument calms you?

Or does it help your brain react differently to the stress?

- So really a couple of ways, and I think both ways that you said are true.

One is we know that music has, like listening to music has a powerful impact on our nervous system and even the stress regulation system.

Depending on the music that you listen to and the person you are, we know that listening to music can impact our sympathetic nervous system, bring down our blood pressure and kind of like heart rate, so that really helps with calming us down.

In terms of the general term that I was saying, it equips you with a way of responding to a stress, is that if learning to play music and belonging to a music kind of a band or an ensemble or a community or this youth orchestra, I said, provides you a community and an outlet to process your emotions.

You play music and you just really pour yourself into like making the music as emotional as it can sound.

You connect with friends, you have a safe space to be around them.

So it just really provides you a way and outlet of safety to process your emotion in a way that you cannot maybe process it in relation to the stress.

So in the time of the pandemic, these children couldn't go out and be with their friends and really deprived socially, but because they had music playing in common, they really connected with one another on the virtual format to process their emotional distress from the pandemic through music with one another.

- And we're down to the final two minutes that we have.

I just wanted to give you a chance, if there's anything else about the idea of the importance of music education that I didn't get to touch on, that you wanted to add.

Or even about, you know, as your study continues, or the new study that you're going to be starting, is there anything else you wanted to add?

- I think you were very complete in asking all the questions.

I'm happy to share any data that you would like to see, or your audience wanted to see.

But really kind of remembering music is not conservatory level, it's not at orchestra level.

Music is part of our life.

Singing, dancing to music, we all know how to sing, we all sing in the shower, so we can all sing outside.

Just not inhibiting ourselves from consuming and practicing music and kind of providing a musical environment at home that allows all family members to engage with it.

- Okay, well, thank you so much.

And this has been an Ohio Learns 360 Family Webinar.

Thank you for joining us, and I wanna say thank you to Dr. Assal Habibi.

Thank you for joining us for this event.

We appreciate your time.

- Pleasure, thank you.

- And please provide your feedback on this topic and help inform future topics by completing a brief survey.

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Thank you to Ohio Learns 360 and the Ohio Department of Education for this event.

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And thanks to the television production team here at WOSU for making this event possible.

You can watch other webinars in this series and find out more information about upcoming virtual events by visiting our website at ohiolearns360.org.

I'm Amy Juravich.

Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.