Dr. Marija Pranjić — How Music Shapes the Brain

Amazing.

I love that when you talk about growing up in Croatia with affordable music programs and, and now that you're studying the importance of kids having access to music and then working in an environment where arts programs are being cut everywhere and also becoming unaffordable for many, many families.

This is part of the reason why I wanted to talk to you because [laughs] I'm seeing it everywhere.

I'm based just outside of New York City, and I see the programs around me being cut and the danger that that has on early childhood development.

So I guess let's talk about that, if you're all right starting there.

Absolutely.

I mean, through my clinical work, I was working in oncology, in brain rehabilitation.

I mean, these are all very, very, very different contexts, but I'm really glad that right now I kind of returned to early development because I think obviously that's where everything starts and that's where we know the impact of our interventions or the things that we can provide within the environment have the most impact.

And so I was actually listening to your episode with Tony Matsoukas, who really beautifully, like, pointed out that, you know, there's this systemic issue of arts education, you know, disappearing from schools and then consequently it becomes this elitist art form and, which was the reason why I highlighted that in Croatia.

You know, if that was the barrier, I would not have become a musician, and this would be the case for many of my colleagues... talented, amazing colleagues who I know are working in Croatia because the barrier would have just taken us a completely different direction, and I'm sure that's what's actually happening, especially in North America, where it's just structured in a slightly different way that accessibility is the real barrier.

As a neuroscientist and researcher in this area, I must say that my motivation is really to understand better the brain development in general, especially this day and age where it's very different, right? Like, we are talking about the digital era, about kids growing up in a different way than they used to even, like, 10 years ago.

And so for me, the perspective on music education really changes from something that leads you to doing it professionally as an outcome versus having access to it to actually optimize your brain development.

And what we are seeing in the literature is that we understand that there is this kind of dichotomy at the moment where we have kids who are growing up in the environments that provide less sensory input, because if you spend more time in front of our screens, we're exploring less really kind of that sensory interaction or interaction in general.

Motor development is also some patterns that we are observing.

It's kind of, kind of lagging behind compared to previous generations.

And at the same time, we have this affordable cross-cultural phenomenon that really wires our brain in a way that's not related to your talent, it's not related to your skill, that, you know, you're able to perform something on the piano, but it's really wiring your brain and folding this kind of important foundation for the emergence of speech and language, for motor coordination, for cognitive development, not to even mention the self-regulation, expression, all these important tools that are really important in shaping who we end up being as adults.

So I do have a lot of different opinions and interests in terms of research, how we can specifically advocate now and use that research to really provide evidence that music should not be something extra, but that music is one of the rare tools that in fact is very accessible and affordable and should not be removed from education the way we see it happening.