When I was young. I never fully appreciated why my parents signed me up for every music class. I viewed practicing the piano and the violin as a burden, or something that had to be done every day before being able to watch Disney Channel.
While the majority of my classmates would bond over their dislike of learning an instrument. I found myself gradually expecting to learn new songs, practice them and perform them. Maybe it's because my parents used Disney Channel as an incentive, or maybe I just needed their early push. Regardless. I came to appreciate music as a form of self-expression.
Learning musical notes has benefits to language development and cognitive (以知的) functions. Studies have shown that the left planum temporale, the part of the brain involved in hearing processing and receptive language, is active when musicians are either reading and listening to music or comprehending speech. But when non-musicians are listening to music, their brains do not process it in the same area as language—while processing language is a natural ability, music awareness is something that can be obtained through practicing.
Take Finland for example, where the average person learns to speak three to five languages. This is a result of the country's custom of early music training. in which children learn the fundamentals of musical notes through songs and games. In fact, a study reveals a strong connection between children who study music before and the development of higher IQs and a bigger range of vocabulary.
In addition, evolutionary evidence from Oxford University highlights how speech and language started developing merely 200.000 years ago. It's clear that the neural networks of both music and language have overlap(重叠部分), and that our use of speech as a form of communication has its roots in the original evolutionary history of music. So if you're looking to learn something new, consider picking up a new instrument!
