Musicians are Smarter?

As the Huffington Post reports:

Researchers tested the mental abilities of senior citizens and discovered that musicians performed better at a number of tests. In particular, musicians excelled at visual memory tasks. While musicians had similar verbal capabilities to non-musicians, the musicians’ ability to memorize new words was markedly better, too. Perhaps most importantly, the musicians’ IQ scores were higher overall than those who spent their lives listening to music rather than performing it.


Kindermusik just posted on this blog about how 6 year olds taking music lessons were shown to have enhanced IQs. This study shows that the benefit to intelligence and IQ lasts throughout life, well into the senior years. That leads to another very important point that I read. The research proved that the younger the musician was when he or she started playing an instrument, the sharper the mind in old age. Now, that doesn’t mean starting your toddler at piano lessons at age 2 is right either (there is an appropriate age for proper music instruction to start). But, it does mean that doing age-appropriate musical activities with your children from a very young age may actually help raise your child’s IQ and intelligence.