Musical Training improves phonemic awareness

For the first time, research has found a connection between musical training and the brain’s processing of oral language. In a study of 28 to 40 adults (the number varied in the different parts of the research) led by John Gabrieli, a psychology professor formerly at Stanford and now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, those with uninterrupted musical training starting at age 7 or earlier were better able to distinguish between similar sounds, and their brain activity was more focused when doing so. As early as next summer, Gabrieli hopes to study children to see if musical training can improve reading and language skills.