TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Anita Collins: The benefits of music education

Unscramble the Blue Letters

What if, what if a large number of scientific studies had found that there was one activity that could irmpove our cognitive function, help our memory systems to work, help us to laern language, help us to mrtdeaoe our emotional states, help us to solve complex porebmls and help our brains to be healthier into later life? What if that activity, while beneficial if undertaken at any time during our lives, was actually found by the scientists to be most beneficial if it was undertaken before the age of seven? What if that activity, unlike the momentary pain of a vaccination neldee, is actually enjoyable for everyone involved? Now, you might be expecting me to reveal a new superfood we could eat some more of, maybe a pill we could take every day or an exercise regimen we could start, But actually, this activity is as old as our cultures and societies itself. And that activity is music education. Now, I may well be biased. I am a music educator, and I understand the world through the twin lenses of being a musician and being a teacher. But even before I became a teacher, I used to look around at all the people I was doing musical activities with and I used to wonder why they seemed to be good at everything, why they seem to do well at all of their studies, why they fit more into a day. And while many of them, most of them, never went on to be musicians in their professional lives, the crreeas they did choose were incredibly diverse and they were so successful in them. and they continue to be so. What, if anything, did music education have to do with that? So when it came time for me to choose a topic for my PhD study, it became pretty clear pretty quickly, I wanted to know if msiuc education befteneid brain development. What I found was a huge amount of research, now two decades worth, conducted by neuroscientists. And the neuroscientists had stumbled on something kind of by accident. They were looking at the bairn fnoitnucs and structures of musicians, and, literally, their brains looked different and they function differently and in many ceass, far more effectively. So the neuroscientists srettad to do experiments that compared guoprs of musicians with groups of non-musicians doing all manner of tasks. Now, it's important at this point to share the definition of musician that the neuroscientists use. They believe it was someone who learnt a musical instrument and had learnt it formally, meaning they'd had lessons from an expert every week. They'd learnt how to read music, most of them had been involved in ensemble music-making experiences, and they'd done it for a reasonably long period of time, two years at the very least. Now, to help me eplaixn some of this rcsereah, I'm going to use, I hope - There we go! Thank you. I'm going to use some animation from a TED Education film that I wrote and I hepled to create earlier this year. Now, the technology that helped the neuroscientists allow them to see our brains working in real time. And what they did is they used fMRI machines and PET scanners to watch what was happening. They would get the participants to do all sorts of tasks - riedang, maths problems - and they would see certain areas of the brain light up. But when they asked the pipcttiarnas to listen to music, they saw fireworks. They had never seen so many areas of the brain light up at the same time. So why did music education have this impact on the brain? Well, what they found is that music education works three areas of the brain at once: the motor, visual and auditory cortices. If we think about it, it's like a full-brain workout; it's like our legs,our arms and our torso doing an exercise at the same time. Music ecudation is exercise for the brain. And among many, many other things, they also found that musicians had a larger bigdre, a larger corpus csuaollm, across the two heehpsiemrs of the brain, which allowed the messages to tvreal far more quickly and in very, very ceaitvre pathways. So what did this brain exercise mean for how musicians' brains actually functioned? Again, among many, many other things they found, they found that musicians were able to solve puzzles and problems far more effectively and creatively. They found that musicians had higher levels of executive function. Now, executive fonitucn is a ceoplmx gurop of activities in our brain that solve those really complex problems that have logical, strategic, conceptual, emotional etmlenes to them. They also found that musicians had very highly developed moermy systems in their brain. And that they thought this might have hneepapd because when a maiisucn makes a memory, they actually put tags against it - an emotional tag, a visual tag, a ccutnaopel tag, a contextual tag. And overall, so far with these two decades of research that we now have, they have found that music education riases the general cognitive capacity of anyone who undertakes it. And even further to that, they've found that music education helps us be clbtrfomaoe with discomfort. Now, learning is uncomfortable: we're asking our birans and our biedos to do things we've never done before. So music education actually helps us be comfortable in that state. It helps us to feel comfortable with learning. Now, I'd like to share with you two studies which, to me, highlight some of the many applications and imatpcs that music education could have. First one involves babies. I've seen very trusting mothers allow their beautiful babies to be put into fMRI mancheis so the neuroscientists could motnior their brain functions as the mothers spoke to them, along with many other tasks. Now, I say "trusting mothers" because these babies were between one and three days old. What the neuroscientists saw is that the babies were using their music-processing networks to understand their mother's voices. larlteliy, they were hearing music in their mother's voices. And this confirms something that the neuroscientists had been tknihnig for a while, that music and language processing are very closely ccnoetned in the brain, that, indeed, at birth we need our music prsecniosg to understand our language: at brith, we are musical. The second study ievlonvs IQ points. And I know we could have a whole other TED Talk about IQ points, but they are a well-used measure of intellectual capacity. And in this study cmirnapog musicians with non-musicians, they found that those that had undertaken music education before the age of seven had around about 7.5 IQ points hgeihr than those that had not. Now, 7.5 IQ points doesn't sound like much, but if we put it in context, an IQ of 100 is said to be average or normal, an IQ of 130 is said to be genius or entry into Mensa. So 7.5 points is huge. It's over 20%. And even further to that, another study looked at the economic capacity vs. IQ point, how much more we would earn per year, on average, per one IQ pniot that we had higher. What they found in today's dollars is that for every IQ point higher we have is equal to about $700 per year. Let's take our 7.5 IQ points for music education. That's about $5000 per year. Now think of that across 10 years, and suddenly we start to see that music education could have an enmoours impact on every part of our society. Now, in every area of scientific study, it is incredibly important to ask big questions and to look at the myths that exist in that area. And there are two big ones in this area, and they are that to play music we need to be smart and to play music we need to be talented. Neuroscientists have now done a large number of rzoendamid studies that have showed that music education impacts everybody who undertakes it. You don't need to be smart to satrt with. And if we think back to that study about babies, we're all born musacil. We have to be to unrsdentad lnguaage. It is the ecpexeenris and the opportunities that we have in life that realizes that talent. And this gets me thinking even more about the fact that music education could be the glue that could bring together so many things that we are dealing with in our eicnouadatl systems and our societies today. Let me give you some examples. Learning disorders. At the moment, many of them understood to be a miscommunication between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain. And as we saw eealirr, music education actually makes those two sides of the brain work together really well. ADHD, again, at the moment understood to be a mistiming between the motor, visual and adiuotry cortices.

Open Cloze

What if, what if a large number of scientific studies had found that there was one activity that could _______ our cognitive function, help our memory systems to work, help us to _____ language, help us to ________ our emotional states, help us to solve complex ________ and help our brains to be healthier into later life? What if that activity, while beneficial if undertaken at any time during our lives, was actually found by the scientists to be most beneficial if it was undertaken before the age of seven? What if that activity, unlike the momentary pain of a vaccination ______, is actually enjoyable for everyone involved? Now, you might be expecting me to reveal a new superfood we could eat some more of, maybe a pill we could take every day or an exercise regimen we could start, But actually, this activity is as old as our cultures and societies itself. And that activity is music education. Now, I may well be biased. I am a music educator, and I understand the world through the twin lenses of being a musician and being a teacher. But even before I became a teacher, I used to look around at all the people I was doing musical activities with and I used to wonder why they seemed to be good at everything, why they seem to do well at all of their studies, why they fit more into a day. And while many of them, most of them, never went on to be musicians in their professional lives, the _______ they did choose were incredibly diverse and they were so successful in them. and they continue to be so. What, if anything, did music education have to do with that? So when it came time for me to choose a topic for my PhD study, it became pretty clear pretty quickly, I wanted to know if _____ education _________ brain development. What I found was a huge amount of research, now two decades worth, conducted by neuroscientists. And the neuroscientists had stumbled on something kind of by accident. They were looking at the _____ _________ and structures of musicians, and, literally, their brains looked different and they function differently and in many _____, far more effectively. So the neuroscientists _______ to do experiments that compared ______ of musicians with groups of non-musicians doing all manner of tasks. Now, it's important at this point to share the definition of musician that the neuroscientists use. They believe it was someone who learnt a musical instrument and had learnt it formally, meaning they'd had lessons from an expert every week. They'd learnt how to read music, most of them had been involved in ensemble music-making experiences, and they'd done it for a reasonably long period of time, two years at the very least. Now, to help me _______ some of this ________, I'm going to use, I hope - There we go! Thank you. I'm going to use some animation from a TED Education film that I wrote and I ______ to create earlier this year. Now, the technology that helped the neuroscientists allow them to see our brains working in real time. And what they did is they used fMRI machines and PET scanners to watch what was happening. They would get the participants to do all sorts of tasks - _______, maths problems - and they would see certain areas of the brain light up. But when they asked the ____________ to listen to music, they saw fireworks. They had never seen so many areas of the brain light up at the same time. So why did music education have this impact on the brain? Well, what they found is that music education works three areas of the brain at once: the motor, visual and auditory cortices. If we think about it, it's like a full-brain workout; it's like our legs,our arms and our torso doing an exercise at the same time. Music _________ is exercise for the brain. And among many, many other things, they also found that musicians had a larger ______, a larger corpus ________, across the two ___________ of the brain, which allowed the messages to ______ far more quickly and in very, very ________ pathways. So what did this brain exercise mean for how musicians' brains actually functioned? Again, among many, many other things they found, they found that musicians were able to solve puzzles and problems far more effectively and creatively. They found that musicians had higher levels of executive function. Now, executive ________ is a _______ _____ of activities in our brain that solve those really complex problems that have logical, strategic, conceptual, emotional ________ to them. They also found that musicians had very highly developed ______ systems in their brain. And that they thought this might have ________ because when a ________ makes a memory, they actually put tags against it - an emotional tag, a visual tag, a __________ tag, a contextual tag. And overall, so far with these two decades of research that we now have, they have found that music education ______ the general cognitive capacity of anyone who undertakes it. And even further to that, they've found that music education helps us be ___________ with discomfort. Now, learning is uncomfortable: we're asking our ______ and our ______ to do things we've never done before. So music education actually helps us be comfortable in that state. It helps us to feel comfortable with learning. Now, I'd like to share with you two studies which, to me, highlight some of the many applications and _______ that music education could have. First one involves babies. I've seen very trusting mothers allow their beautiful babies to be put into fMRI ________ so the neuroscientists could _______ their brain functions as the mothers spoke to them, along with many other tasks. Now, I say "trusting mothers" because these babies were between one and three days old. What the neuroscientists saw is that the babies were using their music-processing networks to understand their mother's voices. _________, they were hearing music in their mother's voices. And this confirms something that the neuroscientists had been ________ for a while, that music and language processing are very closely _________ in the brain, that, indeed, at birth we need our music __________ to understand our language: at _____, we are musical. The second study ________ IQ points. And I know we could have a whole other TED Talk about IQ points, but they are a well-used measure of intellectual capacity. And in this study _________ musicians with non-musicians, they found that those that had undertaken music education before the age of seven had around about 7.5 IQ points ______ than those that had not. Now, 7.5 IQ points doesn't sound like much, but if we put it in context, an IQ of 100 is said to be average or normal, an IQ of 130 is said to be genius or entry into Mensa. So 7.5 points is huge. It's over 20%. And even further to that, another study looked at the economic capacity vs. IQ point, how much more we would earn per year, on average, per one IQ _____ that we had higher. What they found in today's dollars is that for every IQ point higher we have is equal to about $700 per year. Let's take our 7.5 IQ points for music education. That's about $5000 per year. Now think of that across 10 years, and suddenly we start to see that music education could have an ________ impact on every part of our society. Now, in every area of scientific study, it is incredibly important to ask big questions and to look at the myths that exist in that area. And there are two big ones in this area, and they are that to play music we need to be smart and to play music we need to be talented. Neuroscientists have now done a large number of __________ studies that have showed that music education impacts everybody who undertakes it. You don't need to be smart to _____ with. And if we think back to that study about babies, we're all born _______. We have to be to __________ ________. It is the ___________ and the opportunities that we have in life that realizes that talent. And this gets me thinking even more about the fact that music education could be the glue that could bring together so many things that we are dealing with in our ___________ systems and our societies today. Let me give you some examples. Learning disorders. At the moment, many of them understood to be a miscommunication between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain. And as we saw _______, music education actually makes those two sides of the brain work together really well. ADHD, again, at the moment understood to be a mistiming between the motor, visual and ________ cortices.

Solution

impacts
benefited
travel
callosum
experiences
research
groups
involves
education
language
bridge
explain
higher
thinking
learn
creative
brain
reading
earlier
functions
raises
randomized
helped
birth
started
point
group
start
comfortable
problems
participants
memory
bodies
educational
happened
musician
needle
machines
careers
musical
conceptual
improve
complex
hemispheres
music
comparing
function
literally
monitor
enormous
cases
understand
connected
moderate
brains
elements
auditory
processing

Original Text

What if, what if a large number of scientific studies had found that there was one activity that could improve our cognitive function, help our memory systems to work, help us to learn language, help us to moderate our emotional states, help us to solve complex problems and help our brains to be healthier into later life? What if that activity, while beneficial if undertaken at any time during our lives, was actually found by the scientists to be most beneficial if it was undertaken before the age of seven? What if that activity, unlike the momentary pain of a vaccination needle, is actually enjoyable for everyone involved? Now, you might be expecting me to reveal a new superfood we could eat some more of, maybe a pill we could take every day or an exercise regimen we could start, But actually, this activity is as old as our cultures and societies itself. And that activity is music education. Now, I may well be biased. I am a music educator, and I understand the world through the twin lenses of being a musician and being a teacher. But even before I became a teacher, I used to look around at all the people I was doing musical activities with and I used to wonder why they seemed to be good at everything, why they seem to do well at all of their studies, why they fit more into a day. And while many of them, most of them, never went on to be musicians in their professional lives, the careers they did choose were incredibly diverse and they were so successful in them. and they continue to be so. What, if anything, did music education have to do with that? So when it came time for me to choose a topic for my PhD study, it became pretty clear pretty quickly, I wanted to know if music education benefited brain development. What I found was a huge amount of research, now two decades worth, conducted by neuroscientists. And the neuroscientists had stumbled on something kind of by accident. They were looking at the brain functions and structures of musicians, and, literally, their brains looked different and they function differently and in many cases, far more effectively. So the neuroscientists started to do experiments that compared groups of musicians with groups of non-musicians doing all manner of tasks. Now, it's important at this point to share the definition of musician that the neuroscientists use. They believe it was someone who learnt a musical instrument and had learnt it formally, meaning they'd had lessons from an expert every week. They'd learnt how to read music, most of them had been involved in ensemble music-making experiences, and they'd done it for a reasonably long period of time, two years at the very least. Now, to help me explain some of this research, I'm going to use, I hope - There we go! Thank you. I'm going to use some animation from a TED Education film that I wrote and I helped to create earlier this year. Now, the technology that helped the neuroscientists allow them to see our brains working in real time. And what they did is they used fMRI machines and PET scanners to watch what was happening. They would get the participants to do all sorts of tasks - reading, maths problems - and they would see certain areas of the brain light up. But when they asked the participants to listen to music, they saw fireworks. They had never seen so many areas of the brain light up at the same time. So why did music education have this impact on the brain? Well, what they found is that music education works three areas of the brain at once: the motor, visual and auditory cortices. If we think about it, it's like a full-brain workout; it's like our legs,our arms and our torso doing an exercise at the same time. Music education is exercise for the brain. And among many, many other things, they also found that musicians had a larger bridge, a larger corpus callosum, across the two hemispheres of the brain, which allowed the messages to travel far more quickly and in very, very creative pathways. So what did this brain exercise mean for how musicians' brains actually functioned? Again, among many, many other things they found, they found that musicians were able to solve puzzles and problems far more effectively and creatively. They found that musicians had higher levels of executive function. Now, executive function is a complex group of activities in our brain that solve those really complex problems that have logical, strategic, conceptual, emotional elements to them. They also found that musicians had very highly developed memory systems in their brain. And that they thought this might have happened because when a musician makes a memory, they actually put tags against it - an emotional tag, a visual tag, a conceptual tag, a contextual tag. And overall, so far with these two decades of research that we now have, they have found that music education raises the general cognitive capacity of anyone who undertakes it. And even further to that, they've found that music education helps us be comfortable with discomfort. Now, learning is uncomfortable: we're asking our brains and our bodies to do things we've never done before. So music education actually helps us be comfortable in that state. It helps us to feel comfortable with learning. Now, I'd like to share with you two studies which, to me, highlight some of the many applications and impacts that music education could have. First one involves babies. I've seen very trusting mothers allow their beautiful babies to be put into fMRI machines so the neuroscientists could monitor their brain functions as the mothers spoke to them, along with many other tasks. Now, I say "trusting mothers" because these babies were between one and three days old. What the neuroscientists saw is that the babies were using their music-processing networks to understand their mother's voices. Literally, they were hearing music in their mother's voices. And this confirms something that the neuroscientists had been thinking for a while, that music and language processing are very closely connected in the brain, that, indeed, at birth we need our music processing to understand our language: at birth, we are musical. The second study involves IQ points. And I know we could have a whole other TED Talk about IQ points, but they are a well-used measure of intellectual capacity. And in this study comparing musicians with non-musicians, they found that those that had undertaken music education before the age of seven had around about 7.5 IQ points higher than those that had not. Now, 7.5 IQ points doesn't sound like much, but if we put it in context, an IQ of 100 is said to be average or normal, an IQ of 130 is said to be genius or entry into Mensa. So 7.5 points is huge. It's over 20%. And even further to that, another study looked at the economic capacity vs. IQ point, how much more we would earn per year, on average, per one IQ point that we had higher. What they found in today's dollars is that for every IQ point higher we have is equal to about $700 per year. Let's take our 7.5 IQ points for music education. That's about $5000 per year. Now think of that across 10 years, and suddenly we start to see that music education could have an enormous impact on every part of our society. Now, in every area of scientific study, it is incredibly important to ask big questions and to look at the myths that exist in that area. And there are two big ones in this area, and they are that to play music we need to be smart and to play music we need to be talented. Neuroscientists have now done a large number of randomized studies that have showed that music education impacts everybody who undertakes it. You don't need to be smart to start with. And if we think back to that study about babies, we're all born musical. We have to be to understand language. It is the experiences and the opportunities that we have in life that realizes that talent. And this gets me thinking even more about the fact that music education could be the glue that could bring together so many things that we are dealing with in our educational systems and our societies today. Let me give you some examples. Learning disorders. At the moment, many of them understood to be a miscommunication between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain. And as we saw earlier, music education actually makes those two sides of the brain work together really well. ADHD, again, at the moment understood to be a mistiming between the motor, visual and auditory cortices.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
music education	25
cognitive capacity	4
iq points	4
deliberate steps	3
large number	2
memory systems	2
solve complex	2
complex problems	2
brain functions	2
fmri machines	2
brain light	2
auditory cortices	2
executive function	2
general cognitive	2
iq point	2
play music	2
understand language	2
brain work	2
universal music	2
music teacher	2

ngrams of length 3

collocation	frequency
general cognitive capacity	2
universal music education	2

Important Words

accident
activities
activity
adhd
age
allowed
amount
animation
applications
area
areas
arms
asked
auditory
average
babies
beautiful
beneficial
benefited
biased
big
birth
bodies
born
brain
brains
bridge
bring
callosum
capacity
careers
cases
choose
clear
closely
cognitive
comfortable
compared
comparing
complex
conceptual
conducted
confirms
connected
context
contextual
continue
corpus
cortices
create
creative
creatively
cultures
day
days
dealing
decades
definition
developed
development
differently
discomfort
disorders
diverse
dollars
earlier
earn
eat
economic
education
educational
educator
effectively
elements
emotional
enjoyable
enormous
ensemble
entry
equal
examples
executive
exercise
exist
expecting
experiences
experiments
expert
explain
fact
feel
film
fireworks
fit
fmri
formally
function
functioned
functions
general
genius
give
glue
good
group
groups
happened
happening
healthier
hearing
helped
helps
hemispheres
higher
highlight
highly
hope
huge
impact
impacts
important
improve
incredibly
instrument
intellectual
involved
involves
iq
kind
language
large
larger
learn
learning
learnt
left
legs
lenses
lessons
levels
life
light
listen
literally
lives
logical
long
looked
machines
manner
maths
meaning
measure
memory
mensa
messages
miscommunication
mistiming
moderate
moment
momentary
monitor
mothers
motor
music
musical
musician
musicians
myths
needle
networks
neuroscientists
normal
number
opportunities
pain
part
participants
pathways
people
period
pet
phd
pill
play
point
points
pretty
problems
processing
professional
put
puzzles
questions
quickly
raises
randomized
read
reading
real
realizes
regimen
research
reveal
scanners
scientific
scientists
share
showed
sides
smart
societies
society
solve
sorts
sound
spoke
start
started
state
states
strategic
structures
studies
study
stumbled
successful
suddenly
superfood
systems
tag
tags
talent
talented
talk
tasks
teacher
technology
ted
thinking
thought
time
today
topic
torso
travel
trusting
twin
understand
understood
undertaken
undertakes
vaccination
visual
voices
wanted
watch
week
work
working
works
world
worth
wrote
year
years