LEARNING, ARTS, AND THE BRAIN The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition About Dana The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropic organization with particular interests in brain science, immunology, and education. In addition to making grants for research in neuroscience and immunology, Dana produces books and periodicals from the Dana Press; coordinates the international Brain Awareness week campaign; and supports the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, a nonprofit organization of more than 250 neuroscientists, including ten Nobel laureates, committed to advancing public awareness of the progress of brain research In 2000 the Foundation extended its longtime aid to education to fund innovative professional development programs leading to increased and improved teaching of the performing arts. Dana’s focus is on training for in-school art specialists and professional artists who teach in public schools. The arts education direct grants are supported by providing information such as “best practices,” to arts educators, artists in residence, teachers and students through symposia, periodicals, and books. The Dana Web site is at www.dana.org The Dana Foundation Board of Directors William Safire, Chairman Edward F. Rover, President Edward Bleier Wallace L. Cook Charles A. Dana III Steven E. Hyman, M.D. Ann McLaughlin Korologos Lasalle D. Leffall, M.D. Hildegarde E. Mahoney L. Guy Palmer, II Herbert J. Siegel Learning, Arts, and the Brain The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition Organized by Michael Gazzaniga, Ph.D. Edited by Carolyn Asbury, ScM.P.H., Ph.D., and Barbara Rich, Ed.D. New York/Washington, D.C. Copyright 2008 by Dana Press, all rights reserved Published by Dana Press New York/Washington, D.C. The Dana Foundation 745 Fifth Avenue, Suite 900 New York, NY 10151 900 15th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20005 DANA is a federally registered trademark. ISBN: 978-1-932594-36-2 Contents Summary Arts and Cognition: Findings Hint at Relationships v Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D. University of California at Santa Barbara 1 How Arts Training Influences Cognition 1 Michael Posner, Ph.D., Mary K. Rothbart, Ph.D., Brad E. Sheese, Ph.D., and Jessica Kieras, Ph.D. University of Oregon 2 Musical Skill and Cognition 11 John Jonides, Ph.D. University of Michigan 3 Effects of Music Instruction on Developing Cognitive Systems 17 at the Foundations of Mathematics and Science Elizabeth Spelke, Ph.D. Harvard University 4 Training in the Arts, Reading, and Brain Imaging 51 Brian Wandell, Ph.D., Robert F. Dougherty, Ph.D., Michal Ben-Shachar, Ph.D., Gayle K. Deutsch Ph.D., and Jessica Tsang Stanford University 5 Dance and the Brain 61 Scott Grafton, M.D. and Emily Cross, M.S. University of California at Santa Barbara iii iv Table of Contents 6 Developing and Implementing Neuroimaging Tools to 71 Determine if Training in the Arts Impacts the Brain Mark D’Esposito, M.D. University of California, Berkeley 7 Arts Education, the Brain, and Language 81 Kevin Niall Dunbar, Ph.D. University of Toronto at Scarborough 8 Arts Education, the Brain, and Language 93 Laura-Ann Petitto, Ed.D. University of Toronto 9 Effects of Music Training on Brain and Cognitive 105 Development in Under-Privileged 3- to 5-Year-Old Children: Preliminary Results Helen Neville, Ph.D. and (in alphabetical order): Annika Andersson, M.S., Olivia Bagdade, B.A., Ted Bell, Ph.D., Jeff Currin, B.A., Jessica Fanning, Ph.D., Scott Klein, B.A., Brittni Lauinger, B.A., Eric Pakulak, M.S., David Paulsen, M.S., Laura Sabourin, Ph.D., Courtney Stevens, Ph.D., Stephanie Sundborg, M.S., and Yoshiko Yamada, Ph.D. University of Oregon About the Contributors and Editors 117 Acknowledgements 127 Index 129 Arts and Cognition Findings Hint at Relationships Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D. University of California at Santa Barbara In 2004, the Dana Arts and Cognition Consortium brought together cognitive neuroscientists from seven universities across the United States to grapple with the question of why arts training has been associated with higher academic performance. Is it simply that smart people are drawn to “do” art—to study and perform music, dance, drama—or does early arts training cause changes in the brain that enhance other important aspects of cognition? The consortium can now report findings that allow for a deeper understanding of how to define and evaluate the possible causal relationships between arts training and the ability of the brain to learn in other cognitive domains. The research includes new data about the effects of arts training that should stimulate future investigation. The preliminary conclusions we have reached may soon lead to trustworthy assumptions about the impact of arts study on the brain; this should be helpful to parents, students, educators, neuroscientists, and policymakers in making personal, institutional, and policy decisions. Specifics of each participating scientist’s research program are detailed in the appended reports that can be downloaded from www.dana.org. Here is a summary of what the group has learned: 1. An interest in a performing art leads to a high state of motivation that produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition. 2. Genetic studies have begun to yield candidate genes that may help explain individual differences in interest in the arts. 3. Specific links exist between high levels of music training and the ability to manipulate information in both working and long-term memory; these links extend beyond the domain of music training. v vi Arts and Cognition: Findings Hint at Relationships 4. In children, there appear to be specific observe, but only an understanding of mechanisms links between the practice of music and drives action and change. skills in geometrical representation, Although scientists must constantly warn of though not in other forms of the need to distinguish between correlation and numerical representation. causation, it is important to realize that neuroscience 5. Correlations exist between music training often begins with correlations—usually, the discovery and both reading acquisition and that a certain kind of brain activity works in concert sequence learning. One of the central with a certain kind of behavior. But in deciding what predictors of early literacy, phonological research will be most productive, it matters whether awareness, is correlated with both music these correlations are loose or tight. Many of the training and the development of a specific studies cited here tighten up correlations that have brain pathway. been noted before, thereby laying the groundwork 6. Training in acting appears to lead to for unearthing true causal explanations through memory improvement through the understanding biological and brain mechanisms that learning of general skills for manipulating may underlie those relationships. semantic information. Moreover, just as correlations may be tight 7. Adult self-reported interest in aesthetics or loose, causation may also be strong or weak. is related to a temperamental factor of Theoretically, we could claim a broad causation, openness, which in turn is influenced by akin to “smoking causes cancer,” with randomized dopamine-related genes. prospective trials showing that children taking 8. Learning to dance by effective arts training can improve certain cognitive scores. observation is closely related to Yet, even such a clear-cut result would be weak learning by physical practice, both causation, because we would not have found even in the level of achievement and also one brain mechanism of learning that could suggest the neural substrates that support the progress in understanding such mechanisms to organization of complex actions. Effective guide optimal arts exposure. Nor would we have observational learning may transfer to found by what mechanisms the brain generalizes other cognitive skills. that learning, nor anything about developmental periods where the brain is particularly sensitive to The foregoing advances our knowledge about growth from specific types of experience. the relationship between arts and cognition. These A vast area of valuable research lies between advances constitute a first round of a neuroscientific tight correlation and hard evidence based causal attack on the question of whether arts training explanations. Theory-driven questions using changes the brain to enhance general cognitive cognitive neuroscience methods can go beyond capacities. The question is of such wide interest that, efficacy-of-outcome measures by framing as with some organic diseases, insupportable answers experiments that demonstrate how changes in the gain fast traction and then ultimately boomerang. brain, as a result of arts training, enrich a person’s This is the particular difficulty of correlations; life, and how this experience is transferred to the weakness and even spuriousness of some domains that enhance academic learning. Such correlational studies led to the creation of the mid-ground studies would significantly advance our consortium. Correlation accompanies, parallels, knowledge even though they are not at the level of complements or reciprocates, and is interesting to cellular or molecular explanations. Arts and Cognition: Findings Hint at Relationships vii The consortium work on dance is a good mathematics such as geometry need to be example. Our research indicates that dance more profoundly explored with advanced training can enable students to become highly imaging methods. successful observers. We found that learning to 4. The link between intrinsic motivation dance by watching alone can be highly successful for a specific art (e.g. music and visual and that the success is sustained at the neural level arts) and sustained attention to tasks by a strong overlap between brain areas that are involving that art needs to be followed up used for observing actions and also for making with increased behavioral evidence and actual movements. These shared neural substrates imaging methods that can demonstrate are critical for organizing complex actions into that changes in specific pathways are sequential structure.