"The mission of the American Music Therapy Association is to advance public awareness of the benefits of music therapy and increase access to quality music therapy services in a rapidly changing world"
"The researchers concluded that ‘music therapy seems to have an effect on personal relationship, emphasising positive benefits of active listening and performing, and this in turn sets the context for developmental change.’ It was also suggested that the hand-eye coordination which was required by the children when playing music was ‘a significant role in developmental changes’.
"Our goal is to create a science of the temporal dynamics of learning. A coherent view of temporal dynamics relating to learning does not currently exist. In addition, it is difficult to predict which aspects of learning dynamics will prove the most relevant for improving education."
"For most people music is an enjoyable, although momentary, form of entertainment. But for those who seriously practiced a musical instrument when they were young, perhaps when they played in a school orchestra or even a rock band, the musical experience can be something more. Recent research shows that a strong correlation exists between musical training for children and certain other mental abilities."
"Music can evoke emotions, memories, and spiritual or social connectedness, as well as provide a means of expressing feelings and a sense of safety, security and comfort to young children. Music especially provides a fun way for children to learn. It is the one medium that cuts through the boundaries of age, culture, disability and disease."
The Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory has been researching the relationship between the brain and music and how it affects brain development and learning. Their mission is to:
"Dr. Isabel Gauthier and her graduate student Yetta Wong used brain imaging to measure brain activity while people with varying degrees of musical experience made simple judgments about notes, letters and other shapes, shown one at a time on a computer screen. The study found that in individuals who could read musical notation, several brain areas were found to be more engaged for notes than for other images."
"A study was conducted to observe musicians and nonmusicians' temporal learning processing. Musicians’ superior performance appeared to be limited to aspects of timing which are considered to be automatically and immediately derived from online perceptual processing of temporal information. The overall pattern of our findings suggests that perceptual timing skills are superior in musicians, while most of their training has been in more complex performance skills."
"Music Therapy is an established health profession in which music is used within a therapeutic relationship to address physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of individuals."
The American Music Therapy Association
"(Music therapy) can make the difference between withdrawal and awareness, between isolation and interaction, between chronic pain and comfort--between demoralization and dignity"
Barbara Crowe (Past President for National Association for Music Therapy)
Internet Health Library
"This research does break new ground in this field of complementary medicine and demonstrates that music therapy may offer a very valuable option in the treatment of developmental delay in children and will provide a platform for more detailed investigations of the potential roles of music therapy in childhood development."
Internet Health Library
"Learning is an active, dynamic behavior that emerges from interactions between the developing brain of a child and a social world."
TDLC
"Researchers found a correlation between early-childhood musical training and improvements to nonverbal reasoning, verbal ability and enhanced motor and auditory skills."
Inside Science
"The sensory stimulation and playful nature of music can help to develop a child's ability to express emotion, communication, and develop rhythmic movement. There is also evidence to show that speech and language skills can be improved through the stimulation of both hemisphere of the brain."
Healthline
"Memory and learning can be enhanced, and this used with good results in children with learning disabilities. This effect may also be partially due to increased concentration that many people have while listening to music."
Healthline
"When a child has special needs, music may be one of the most powerful ways to reach her and to help her to function at her maximum potential"
Healthy Child
"The human brain has the remarkable ability to adapt in response to changes in the environment over the course of a lifetime. This is the mechanism for learning, growth, and normal development."
Musician Brain
"It may come as no surprise that the amount of practice that goes into learning to play a musical instrument leads to lasting changes in the brain."
TDLC
"The musicians' superior performance in temporal discrimination tasks also fits well into concepts of neuroplastic adaption to attentive auditory processing."
IQ Brian Clock