New findings show that musical training affects the structure and function of different brain areas, how those areas communicate during the creation of music, and how the brain interprets and combines sensory  information. The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health. These views suggest potential new roles for musical training including training plasticity in the brain, offering an alternative tool in education, and treating a range of learning disabilities. Today's new findings show that long-term high level musical training has a broader effect. Researchers found that musicians have a better ability to combine sensory information from hearing, touch, and sight. The age at which musical training begins influenced brain structure and its function. Beginning training before the age of seven has the greatest effect. Even older adults who took music lessons as children but haven't actively played an instrument in decades have a faster brain response  to a speech sound than those who never played an instrument, according to a study appearing November 6 in the Journal of Neuroscience. The finding suggests early musical training has a lasting, positive effect on how the brain deals with sound. "Playing a musical instrument is a multi-sensory and motive experience that creates emotions and movements--from finger tapping to dancing -- and engages pleasure and reward systems in the brain. It has the potential to affect brain function and structure when done over a long period of time," said Gottfried Schlaug, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, press conference speaker, also an expert on music. "As today's findings show, musical training brings about new processes within the brain, at different stages of life, and with a range of effects on creativity, cognition , and learning," he added. Why does the author mention "Even older adults ... a speech sound." in Para. 3?
To suggest how new roles for musical training work. To prove early musical training affects the function of the brain. To explain how the brain interprets sensory information. To show how the brain areas communicate in music training.