Training in classical music from a very young age does indeed do more than build character. It really does alter the brains of young children.

Within the study, Fujioka and his colleagues worked with a group of four to six year olds, half of whom had received musical training for a year. They were exposed to a violin tone and “noise-burst stimulus” in four repeated intervals, and then had their neural responses recorded through the use of an imaging technique which measures the magnetic fields produced by electrical activity in the brain known as magnetoencephalography (MEG). Through the MEG scans, it was discovered that the musically trained children showed higher peaks in brain activity in the left hemisphere in response to the violin than the untrained group. The musically trained group also demonstrated an increased ability to discriminate between the two different sounds they were presented with: they responded more quickly to the sound of the violin when it was played than their nonmusical peers.


Based on their study, Fujioka and his colleagues reached a conclusion that musical training has an impact on the wiring of the brain in areas related to memory and attention. This matches up nicely with earlier studies showing that music students demonstrate better memory skills, even for non-music material, than their non-musical peers. They have thus demonstrated that there is more to the Suzuki Method—and instrumental training at a young age in general—than character building and getting children used to performing: it increases memory abilities by positively influencing brain wiring.