Playing an instument is good for teenagers

Playing an instrument is good for your brain. Compared to nonmusicians, young children who strum a guitar or blow a trombone become better readers with better vocabularies. A new study shows that the benefits extend to teenagers as well. Neuroscientists compared two groups of high school students over 3 years: One began learning their first instrument in band class, whereas the other focused on physical fitness in Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). At the end of 3 years, those students who had played instruments were better at detecting speech sounds, like syllables and words that rhyme, than their JROTC peers, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers know that as children grow up, their ability to soak up new information, especially language, starts to diminish. These findings suggest that musical training could keep that window open longer. But the benefits of music aren’t just for musicians; taking up piano could be the difference between an A and a B in Spanish class.