Music and the Brain: What the Neuroscience Actually Shows

This article was originally published in May 2012 and has been substantially revised in May 2026. The original version drew on the left brain/right brain framework that was widely used in popular science writing at the time. Since then, neuroscience research has moved on considerably — including a landmark 2013 study that directly challenged the left/right brain personality model. This revision updates the content to reflect what the research actually shows, while preserving the original comments from readers who found the earlier version useful.

Of all the arguments made in favour of music education, one of the most enduring is that music is uniquely good for the brain. Teachers have sensed it, parents have believed it, and researchers have spent decades trying to understand exactly why.

The intuition is well founded. Music does do something distinctive to the brain — something that most other activities do not. But the explanation for why that is has changed significantly as neuroscience has developed, and the popular framework that shaped much of the early writing on this topic — the idea that music engages the “left brain” and the “right brain” in complementary ways — has not held up well under scrutiny.

That is not a reason to abandon the broader argument. If anything, what modern neuroscience has revealed about how music affects the brain is more interesting and more relevant to music educators than the old framing ever was. The story is not about two hemispheres working in parallel. It is about an entire network of brain systems — auditory, motor, linguistic, emotional — firing together in a way that almost no other human activity produces.

This article explains what that means, why it matters for music education, and what the research actually shows.

The idea that the brain has two distinct hemispheres with different specialisations is not wrong. It is well established that certain functions are lateralised — meaning they tend to be processed predominantly on one side of the brain. Language processing, for instance, is strongly left-lateralised in most people. Visuospatial processing tends to draw more heavily on the right hemisphere. These are genuine findings, supported by decades of neuroscience research.

Where the model ran into trouble was in the leap from those specific findings to a broader personality theory — the popular notion that some people are fundamentally “left-brained” (analytical, logical, sequential) while others are “right-brained” (creative, intuitive, artistic). That idea took hold in popular culture during the 1970s and 1980s and remained influential for decades. It shaped a great deal of educational thinking, including early writing about music and brain development.

The problem is that it does not reflect how the brain actually works. In 2013 — the same year the original version of this article was gaining traction online — researchers at the University of Utah published a study in PLOS ONE that examined brain imaging data from 1,011 people between the ages of seven and 29. They divided each brain into over 7,000 regions and looked for evidence that individuals consistently favour one hemisphere over the other. They found none. There was no evidence in the brain imaging data that people are either left-brained or right-brained as a matter of personality or cognitive style (Nielsen et al., 2013).

This does not mean the hemispheres are identical or interchangeable. Lateralisation of specific functions is real. But the idea that a person’s fundamental character — their creativity, their analytical ability, their artistic sensibility — is determined by which hemisphere dominates is not supported by the evidence. It was a compelling popular narrative that the data simply did not back up.

For music educators, this matters because some of the arguments built on that framework — that music uniquely bridges the analytical left brain and the creative right brain, producing a kind of cognitive balance unavailable through other activities — rest on a model that neuroscience has since moved away from. The core claim that music is distinctively good for brain development remains well supported. But it needs a different, more accurate explanation.

When neuroscientists study what happens in the brain during musical activity — playing an instrument, singing, even listening attentively — what they find is not two hemispheres taking turns. They find something considerably more complex and, for music educators, considerably more interesting.

Music engages multiple brain networks simultaneously. Research over the past two decades has established that musical activity draws on the auditory system, the motor system, the language networks, the emotional and reward systems, and the executive function networks — often all at once, and in ways that are tightly interconnected rather than sequential (Thaut et al., 2021; Speranza et al., 2022).

To understand why this matters, it helps to consider what each of these systems is doing during music-making.

The auditory networks are processing pitch, rhythm, timbre, and the relationships between sounds — tracking melody, anticipating what comes next, detecting when something is slightly off. This is not passive reception. Active musical listening and performance involve continuous predictive processing, where the brain is constantly forming and updating expectations about what the music will do.

The motor networks are engaged whenever music involves movement — which, in active music-making, is always. Playing an instrument requires precise, coordinated physical control. Singing requires breath management, laryngeal control, and articulatory movement. Even rhythmic listening activates motor areas of the brain, which is why people naturally move in response to music and why a steady beat has such a powerful effect on physical coordination.

The language networks are recruited because music and language share deep structural similarities. Both involve sequences of sounds organised by rules, both require the brain to track patterns across time, and both draw on overlapping neural resources. Research has consistently found connections between musical training and language processing — a relationship explored in detail in the companion article on this site, The Research Behind Primary School Music Education: What the Evidence Actually Says.

The emotional and reward systems — including the limbic system and the brain’s dopamine pathways — respond to music in ways that are well documented and remarkably consistent across cultures. Music can induce genuine emotional responses, trigger memories, and activate the same reward circuitry involved in other deeply pleasurable experiences. This is not incidental to music’s value. It is central to why music has been part of human life across every culture and every period of recorded history.

What makes this picture significant for music educators is the word simultaneously. Most activities engage one or two of these systems at a time. Reading engages language and visual processing. Sport engages motor systems and some executive function. Music, particularly active music-making, engages all of them together — and in doing so, creates unusually rich and widespread patterns of neural activity.

As Hallam’s comprehensive research synthesis notes, the breadth of this engagement is one of the key reasons musical training is associated with development across so many different domains — not because music magically transfers skills to unrelated areas, but because the neural systems it trains are the same systems that underpin a wide range of cognitive and social functions (Hallam, 2015).

Understanding that music engages multiple brain networks simultaneously raises a natural question: does that engagement actually change the brain, or does it simply reflect the fact that music is a complex activity?

The answer, supported by a substantial body of research, is that sustained musical training does produce measurable changes in brain structure and function. The brain is not a fixed organ. It is plastic — meaning it reshapes itself in response to experience, forming new connections and strengthening existing ones through repeated use. Musical training is one of the more powerful drivers of this neuroplasticity that researchers have identified.

Studies using brain imaging have found structural differences between trained musicians and non-musicians in multiple brain regions — including areas involved in auditory processing, motor control, and the connections between them. These are not small or incidental differences. They reflect the cumulative effect of years of practice that requires the brain to coordinate listening, movement, memory, and emotional response in real time (Hallam, 2015).

Importantly, this is not simply a matter of musicians being born with different brains. Longitudinal research — studies that follow participants over time rather than comparing groups at a single point — has found that musical training itself drives these structural changes. The brain adapts to the demands that music-making places on it. The more precise and sustained that training, the more extensive the adaptation.

This has a direct implication for how we think about music in primary schools. The neural systems being trained through music — auditory discrimination, motor timing and coordination, pattern recognition, emotional regulation, sustained attention — are not music-specific. They are general-purpose cognitive tools that children use across every area of their learning and their lives. When music education is well taught and sustained over time, it is not merely teaching children to sing or play an instrument. It is exercising the brain in ways that few other school activities replicate.

This is also why the quality and consistency of music education matters so much. Neuroplasticity is driven by repeated, effortful engagement — not by occasional exposure. A well-structured, regular music program gives the brain the sustained practice it needs to produce lasting change. A fragmented or infrequent program is less likely to do so. The research does not support the idea that any music education is automatically beneficial. It supports the idea that good music education, delivered consistently, produces genuine and lasting effects on the developing brain.

Of all the findings in the neuroscience of music and brain development, one of the most practically significant for primary school educators concerns the timing of musical training. The research suggests that the brain is particularly receptive to the effects of musical experience during early childhood — and that starting music young produces some specific structural changes that are more difficult to achieve through later training.

The most compelling evidence for this comes from a 2013 study by Steele, Bailey, Zatorre and Penhune, published in the Journal of Neuroscience from Concordia University in Montreal. The researchers tested 36 adult musicians, splitting them into two groups: those who had begun musical training before the age of seven, and those who had begun after. Crucially, both groups had the same number of years of training and experience — which meant any differences between them could not simply be explained by the early starters having practised for longer.

What the researchers found was striking. Musicians who had started before age seven showed enhanced white matter in the corpus callosum — the bundle of nerve fibres that connects the left and right hemispheres and plays a central role in coordinating communication across the brain. Furthermore, the younger a musician had started, the greater the connectivity. The early starters also showed more accurate motor timing on a movement task, and this advantage persisted even after two days of additional practice (Steele et al., 2013).

The researchers interpreted this as evidence for a sensitive period in brain development — a window during which the brain is particularly responsive to musical training, and during which that training produces structural changes that have lasting effects on motor coordination and interhemispheric communication.

It is worth noting the careful qualification offered by co-author Dr Virginia Penhune at the time of the study’s publication. “It’s important to remember that what we are showing is that early starters have some specific skills and differences in the brain that go along with that,” she said. “But these things don’t necessarily make them better musicians.” The research identifies specific neurological advantages associated with early training — it is not a claim that children who start music before seven will outperform those who start later in every respect, or that later starters cannot achieve high levels of musical ability.

What the finding does suggest, however, is that early childhood represents a genuine window of heightened neurological responsiveness to musical experience. The brain structures that musical training strengthens — particularly those involved in motor timing, coordination, and interhemispheric communication — appear to be more malleable during this period than they will be later. This aligns with the broader neuroscientific understanding of sensitive periods in development, where particular types of experience have greater structural impact at certain points in a child’s growth than they will have if the same experience occurs later.

For primary school music educators, and particularly for those working in Foundation Year and the early primary years, this research provides a strong neurological basis for starting music early and taking it seriously from the very beginning of a child’s schooling. It also reinforces the value of the preschool and early childhood music programs that Fun Music Company has developed — a topic explored in more depth in the companion article, Why Starting Music Early Matters: What the Research Shows.

The neuroscience of music and brain development is a genuinely exciting field, and it has grown substantially in the two decades since the left/right brain framing dominated popular writing on this topic. But research findings are only useful to music educators if they translate into something practical — a clearer sense of what good music education looks like, and why it matters.

Several things emerge clearly from the evidence reviewed in this article.

The first is that active music-making is what drives the neurological benefits. The research consistently distinguishes between passive music listening and active musical participation — singing, playing an instrument, moving to rhythm, engaging with musical structure. Passive listening has some documented benefits, particularly for mood and emotional regulation. But the structural brain changes associated with musical training — the enhanced auditory processing, the motor coordination, the interhemispheric connectivity — are associated with active, sustained, effortful engagement with music. This is a meaningful distinction for how music programs are designed and delivered.

The second is that consistency and duration matter. Neuroplasticity is driven by repeated experience over time. The brain changes associated with musical training do not emerge from occasional exposure. They are the product of regular, structured practice that accumulates over months and years. This has direct implications for how music is scheduled and resourced in primary schools. A music program that runs consistently throughout a child’s primary schooling is neurologically different from one that is delivered sporadically or treated as a lower priority when other demands arise.

The third is that the early years are particularly valuable. The Steele et al. (2013) findings on sensitive periods suggest that Foundation Year and the early primary years represent a window of heightened neurological responsiveness that is worth taking seriously. This does not mean that music education in the later primary years is without value — the evidence does not support that conclusion. But it does suggest that the years before age seven carry a particular neurological significance that educators and school leaders should be aware of when making decisions about when and how music programs are structured.

The fourth — and perhaps most important for generalist classroom teachers who may feel uncertain about their own musical ability — is that the benefits described in this article are associated with well-taught, structured music education, not with any specific level of musical virtuosity in the teacher. What matters is that children are actively engaged with music, that the engagement is regular and sustained, and that it is delivered through a coherent program that builds skills and confidence progressively over time. The RAMSR research discussed in our companion article on the research behind primary school music education demonstrated this clearly: generalist teachers, properly trained and supported, can deliver music and rhythm programs that produce measurable neurological and developmental benefits.

None of this is an argument for music education as a cognitive training tool — a means to an end rather than a worthwhile discipline in its own right. Music deserves its place in primary schools because it is a fundamental part of human experience, because it develops skills and sensibilities that no other subject replicates, and because children have a right to musical education regardless of what it does or does not do for their performance in other areas.

But for those who want to understand what the neuroscience actually shows, the answer is clear. Music is not uniquely good for the brain because it balances two complementary hemispheres. It is uniquely good for the brain because it exercises an unusually wide range of interconnected neural systems — simultaneously, repeatedly, and from an early age. That is a more accurate account of the evidence. And it is, if anything, a more compelling one.

Hallam, S. (2015). The power of music: A research synthesis of the impact of actively making music on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people. International Music Education Research Centre (iMerc).

Nielsen, J.A., Zielinski, B.A., Ferguson, M.A., Lainhart, J.E., & Anderson, J.S. (2013). An evaluation of the left-brain vs. right-brain hypothesis with resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging. PLOS ONE, 8(8).

Speranza, L., Pulcrano, S., Perrone-Capano, C., di Porzio, U., & Volpicelli, F. (2022). Music affects functional brain connectivity and is effective in the treatment of neurological disorders. Reviews in the Neurosciences, 33(7), 789–801.

Steele, C.J., Bailey, J.A., Zatorre, R.J., & Penhune, V.B. (2013). Early musical training and white-matter plasticity in the corpus callosum: Evidence for a sensitive period. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(3), 1282–1290.

Thaut, M.H., Trimarchi, P.D., & Parsons, L.M. (2021). Human brain basis of musical rhythm perception: Common and distinct neural substrates for meter, tempo, and pattern. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 15.