a new Canadian study shows young children who take music lessons have better memories than their nonmusical peers.

    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.

    The study, published in the online edition of the journal Brain, 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 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 .

    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 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 on general memory skills that are correlated with nonmusical abilities such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ," she said.

    那些花錢花時間讓孩子學音樂的家長們可以放心了，加拿大的一項最新研究表明，上過音樂課的兒童比那些沒上過音樂課的同齡兒童記憶力要好。

    這項研究結果在《大腦》雜志的網站上發表，研究發現，上過一年音樂課的兒童在一項記憶力測試中的表現比沒有上過音樂課的兒童好。

    安大略省漢密爾頓市麥克馬斯特大學研究心理學、神經系統科學和行為學的勞雷爾·特芮娜教授說："這項研究告訴我們，是否上音樂課會對大腦的發育產生不同影響。"

    特芮娜說："這項研究首次發現，受過音樂訓練的兒童和未受過音樂訓練的兒童的大腦反應在一年內發生了不同的變化。

    在一年的時間里，研究人員對兩組4至6歲的兒童進行了四項測定，其中一組是在課外時間上音樂課的兒童，另一組是未上音樂課的兒童，研究發現，在短短的四個月內，這兩組兒童的大腦發育都有所不同。

    參加此項研究的兒童接受了一項音樂測試和一項記憶力測試。在音樂測試中，研究人員要求這些兒童對和聲、節奏和旋律進行鑒別；而在記憶力測試中，他們需要聽一系列的數字，將它們記住，然后再把它們復述出來。

    特芮娜教授說，此前已有研究表明，在年齡稍大的兒童中，上過音樂課的兒童智商平均分比上過戲劇課的兒童進步得快。而此項最新研究首次對幼童進行了智商測試。

    她說，"學習音樂兒童的音樂視聽能力上比未學音樂的兒童強，這并不奇怪。"

    "但從另一方面看，十分有趣的是，學習音樂的兒童在一般性記憶力等非音樂技能方面的提高，如讀寫能力、語言記憶、視覺空間分析、數學、智商，比未學習音樂的兒童大。"