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Parents who spend time and money to teach their children music, take heart -- a new Canadian study shows young children who take music lessons have better memories than their nonmusical peers(1).

The study, to be published in the online edition of the journal Brain on Wednesday, showed that after one year of musical training, children performed better in a memory test than those who did not take music classes.

"The research tells us that if you take music lessons your brain is getting wired up differently than if you don't take music lessons," Laurel Trainor, professor of psychology, neuroscience(2) and behavior at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, said.

"This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year," said Trainor who led the study.

Over a year they took four measurements in two groups of children aged between four and six -- those taking music lessons and those taking no musical training outside school -- and found developmental changes over periods as short as four months.

The children completed a music test in which they were asked to discriminate(3) between harmonies, rhythms and melodies, and a memory test in which they had to listen to a series of numbers, remember them and repeat them back.

Trainor said while previous studies have shown that older children given music lessons had greater improvements in IQ scores than children given drama lessons, this is the first study to identify these effects in brain-based measurements in young children.

She said it was not that surprising that children studying music improved in musical listening skills more than children not studying music.

"On the other hand, it is very interesting that the children taking music lessons improved more over the year on general memory skills that are correlated with nonmusicalabilities such as literacy(4), verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ," she said.

1. peer：同等的人

2. neuroscience：神經系統科學

3. discriminate：辨別

4. literacy：讀寫能力

花費金錢和時間讓孩子們學習音樂的家長們注意了，這里有一條振奮人心的消息：一項新的加拿大研究顯示，學習音樂的小孩比不學的擁有更佳的記憶力。

研究顯示，在記憶測試中，經過一年音樂培訓的孩子比未經培訓的孩子表現突出。研究將刊登在周三《動腦》雜志在線版。

安大略省麥馬斯達大學心理學、神經系統科學和行為教授勞雷爾·特萊諾爾說：“研究告訴我們，音樂培訓能夠讓你的大腦的生長與眾不同。”

主研究員特萊諾爾說：“研究首次證明，經過一年的音樂培訓，受訓與未受訓孩子的大腦反應有所區別。”

一年中，研究人員把一群4到6歲的孩子們分成兩組，分別進行四次測試。其中一組接受音樂培訓，另一組不接受任何校外音樂培訓，結果發現每四個月，孩子們的發育就會產生變化。

在音樂測試中，孩子們必須分辨出不同的和弦、節奏和旋律；在記憶測試中，他們會聽到一串數字，然后重復出來。

特萊諾爾說之前曾有研究顯示，學習音樂時間越長的孩子比學習戲劇的孩子擁有更高的智商，此次研究首次證實了音樂對小孩腦部的影響。

她說，毫無疑問學習過音樂的孩子在聽音樂技巧上比沒學過的孩子強。

“有趣的是，另一方面，學過音樂的孩子在其他非音樂方面的進步也更快，例如讀寫、背誦、視覺處理、數學和智商。”