While this is a very focused study, it is clear from a variety of scientific findings that music education is an essential and indispensible component of childhood education in general. Findings from Dr. Kraus’ lab have also indicated that the areas of the brain that are enhanced by musical training are the same areas found deficient in cases of dyslexia.

How many students with possible attention deficits, dyslexia, or other developmental difficulties could be helped by music education? Yet these programs are often the first to be cut when school budgets are tightened.

I’ve often wondered how professional musicians are so wonderfully educated, given the enormous amount of time they have to dedicate to their craft. But when you think about how music could help students better hear and comprehend sounds even in a complex aural environment (e.g. a classroom), it is not surprising given that in music, you are in a real sense listening to perhaps a half a dozen or more conversations or more. In an orchestra, you have to listen to yourself, your section, and all the other instruments in order to play correctly. As a skilled listener, every note is an important component of the piece, and you are easily disturbed (and perhaps later delighted) when you first listen to another recording of your favorite work to find some notes emphasized, diminished, or seemingly eliminated.

The Mozart effect (or at least the over-hyped media and commercialization of it) notwithstanding, music is more than entertaining, it can be educational.

Check out this youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmWRttCo7lo ) of one of my favorite (educated) musicians, Mistko Uchida, as she explains the Schoenberg Piano Concerto (a personal favorite). I love her explanations of what you are hearing, especially at around 5:20 in this particular clip. To the uninitiated some “classical” music sounds like a jumble, but there is really so much beneath the surface. Look and listen to her play in this clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct47T9_liOU) for a good brain workout.

To date, every study that identified practice-related changes in brain structure located these changes in grey matter. Now, for the first time, a paper by Scholz and colleagues in the journal Nature Neuroscience has identified training-induced changes in white-matter architecture. This has important implications for how we understand neurodevelopment.

What are grey (gray) and white matter?
Grey matter is a thin layer (less than half a centimeter thick) that forms the outermost part of the brain. It derives its grey color from neurons and unmyelinated (uninsulated) axons. Grey matter is considered the part of the brain that accomplishes the major cognitive chores – attention, language, learning, memory, perception, and thinking. As such, it was not surprising to discover that when we learn our grey matter changes.

White matter is different. It consists mainly of myelinated axons and does not contain dendrites. It is most commonly regarded as the support structure to the cerebral cortex, and interconnects different brain regions. Hitherto, changes in white matter as a result of learning had never been observed.

What did the study show?
Scholz and colleagues used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to measure white matter in 48 individuals (DTI is a relatively new neuroimaging technique capable of penetrating deep into the brain). Half the individuals were placed into a training group for 6 weeks, where the learned to juggle. The other half did no training for the same six weeks. All the participants were scanned before and after training.

Unsurprisingly, the training group showed significant differences in gray-matter density. What will come as a surprise to many is the observation of increased white matter volume in the training group, specifically the area underlying the right posterior parietal sulcus. The control group showed no such differences.

Why is this important?
In most neuroscience textbooks, white matter is given scant consideration, especially when it comes to learning. Changes in dendrites – dendritic growth – generally hog the headlines as hallmarks of neurodevelopment. When we learn, dendritic branches (little tree-like protrusions that spurt out from our neurons) form new synapses and build the connections that help us remember. White matter has no dendrites, so clearly there is something else going on.

The authors suggest that electrical activity in axons (as the result of learning) may regulate myelination in axons. Similarly, gross changes in the axon – the diameter or packing density – may be the cause.

Whatever, the reason, the white matter is changing. This is very important and promises to elevate the status of white matter as a correlate of neurodevelopment. Moreover, the countless MRI and fMRI studies that associate grey matter changes with everything from Internet use to the acquisition of wealth may only be telling half the story.

MRI techniques are not able to penetrate white matter, and is is quite conceivable that the myriad of studies that focus on the cerebral cortex are missing something. Researchers and educators take note – white matter really does matter!!