Development of music perception in children

Carrying out research on the development of music perception in children anatomic and functional development of the auditory system has to be taken into consideration as well as neuropsychological aspects.

Sequence of structural development of the human auditory system

	Cochlea	Brainstem	Cortex
Embryonic period (1st to 3rd fetal week)	Formation of cochlea and cochlear nerve	Formation of nuclei and pathways	Formation of cortical plate
2nd trimester (14th to 26th fetal week)	Maturation of cochlea and cochlear nerve	Neuronal growth and axial maturation	Cortical growth
Transition to perinatal (27th to 29th fetal week)		Onset of myelination	Formation of temporal lobe
Perinatal period		Maturation of dendrites and myelin	Maturation of marginal layer axons
Transition to childhood (6 months to 1 year)			Onset of thalamic axon development
Early childhood (1 to 5 years)			Maturation of thalamic axons
Late childhood (6 to 12 years)			Maturation of intrinsic axons

Jean K. Moore, Fred H. Linthicum Jr. - International Journal of Audiology 2007; 46:460!478

Anatomical and functional studies suggest substantial effects of musical training on brain development. Already at the level of the brainstem, evoked responses to sound are larger and more accurate in adult musicians compared with non-musicians. These differences are maintained in auditory cortex for musical tones, with larger evoked responses in musicians than non-musicians Certain features of musical experience, such as the pleasantness of consonance, an affinity for regular beats, and multisensory interactions between movement and auditory rhythm, are common across cultures and are evident early in development. These features probably form the basis for musical learning. However, musical systems differ in their pitch and rhythmic structures. Passive exposure to a particular music system in childhood sets up brain structures that are functionally specialized for that structure, a process referred to as enculturation. Certain universal aspects of musical structure, such as the preference for consonance over dissonance, are found early in development and probably arise from properties of the basilar membrane and auditory nerve, in conjunction with general exposure to spectrotemporally structured sounds. The developmental process is complex. Plasticity is affected by various anatomical processes, such as synaptic proliferation and pruning, myelination, and neurofilament and neurotransmitter levels, each of which has its own developmental trajectory. Plasticity is also reduced with learning as neural networks settle into more stable states. Formal musical training has domain-specific effects on the neural encoding of musical structure, enhancing musical performance, music reading and explicit knowledge of the musical structure, as well as domain-general effects on attention and executive functioning, which can affect linguistic and mathematical development. It has been found behavioral evidence for a common pitch processing mechanism in language and music perception. Moreover, by showing qualitative and quantitative differences in the ERPs recorded from musician and non-musician children it may been implied that there are some neurophysiological processes that might underlie positive transfer effects between music and language. ERP studies give evidence that both ERAN (early right anterior negativity) and ELAN (early left anterior negativity) are, at least partly, generated in the same brain regions. Therefore, it seems plausible to expect transfer effects between music and language due to shared processing resources. Moreover, the ERAN is larger in adults with formal musical training than in those without, indicating that more specific representations of musical regularities lead to heightened musical expectancies. Violation of harmonic expectancies and linguistic syntax leads either to an ERAN or to a later, sustained negativity in response to a syntactic violation. There are also differences between children with and without musical training and in linguistically non-impaired compared to language-impaired children when carrying out these processes. Thus musical training facilitates the processing of musical structure. These differences can be found as early as 11 years when children have not played an instrument for longer than 4 or 5 years. The finding that the amplitude of the ERAN is diminished in language-impaired children indicates that they have difficulties when processing musical syntax. Following all those studies existing on this topic it is evident that children can profit from musical training because of a more efficient processing of musical structure and because of its impact on the processing of linguistic syntax.

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