A number of papers published earlier suggested that musical training could affect reading acquisition, most recently Gaab et al (2005). In a press release discussing the paper:
It is well known that formal musical training affects how deeply people appreciate music, Gabrieli said. "This is the first example showing how musical training alters how your brain processes language components," he said. "It shows how important split-second timing is for understanding language—if you're bad at it, you're at risk of becoming a bad reader. But what's important is that people are not stuck with this—the study shows that with training people improved their perception of sounds. It shows that our mental capacity is amenable to experience: The brain is plastic, adaptable and trainable."
Past studies by Tallal and Gabrieli have shown that acoustical training can assist struggling young readers by helping them pick out rapid sound changes within syllables. Other work has shown that musical training helps people perceive sound pitches more effectively and increases verbal memory,
So of course a mini-industry sprung up, offering music training specifically for dyslexic children.
A more recent study suggests that music training as a specific remediation process for dyslexia lacks both neurological and scientific evidence.
A recent press release reports
There is no link between a lack of musical ability and dyslexia. Moreover, attempts to treat dyslexia with music therapy are unwarranted, according to scientists in Belgium writing in the current issue of the International Journal of Arts and Technology.
Cognitive neuroscientist José Morais of the Free University of Brussels and colleagues point out that research into dyslexia has pointed to a problem with how the brain processes sounds and how dyslexic readers manipulate the sounds from which words are composed, the phonemes, consciously and intentionally. It was a relatively short step between the notion that dyslexia is an issue of phonological processing and how this might also be associated with poor musical skills – amusia – that has led to approaches to treating the condition using therapy to improve a dyslexic reader's musical skills.
Morais and colleagues demonstrate that theoretically this is an invalid argument and also present experimental evidence to show that there is no justification either for the link or for using music therapy to treat dyslexia.
That isn't to say that children who are struggling to read shouldn't also be learning an instrument -- far from it!
Citations:
Gaab N, Tallal P, Kim H, Lakshminarayanan K, Archie JJ, Glover GH, Gabrieli JD (2005) Neural correlates of rapid spectrotemporal processing in musicians and nonmusicians.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2005 Dec;1060:82-8. retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16597753 on April 11 2101.
Abstract
Our results suggest that musical training alters the functional anatomy of rapid spectrotemporal processing, resulting in improved behavioral performance along with a more efficient functional network primarily involving traditional language regions. This finding may have important implications for improving language/reading skills, especially in children struggling with dyslexia.
Morais J, Periot A, Lidji P, Kolinsky R (2010). Music and dyslexia. International Journal of Arts and Technology, 2010; 3: 177-194 DOI: 10.1504/IJART.2010.032563
Abstract
Dyslexic readers present deficits in phonological processing, including in the ability to represent and manipulate representations of phonemes consciously and intentionally. An association between such phonological deficits and poor musical skills has been reported in some published work. From this triple association – reading, phonology and music – some authors, referenced in the text, concluded that dyslexia may result from a musical or, more generally, auditory impairment, and some of them suggested that music therapy helps dyslexics to overcome their reading difficulties beyond phonological training. In this article, we attempt to show that, in light of both theoretical reasons and the available evidence, there is no justification either for that causality inference or for the consequent practical recommendation.
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