Let's say you took violin lessons all through elementary school, but you haven't got the instrument out of its case for years. Were all those lessons a waste of your parents' money because you didn't become a violinist? Even though it has been a long time since you played the violin, a new study shows that as little as one year of music training can have a positive impact   on your brain that will last the rest of your life. In an experiment, researchers compared children who had taken music lessons to those who hadn't. Laurel Trainor, who studies music and the mind, discovered that the musically-trained children had better brain responses in certain sound recognition exams. Trainor's findings show the possibility that musical education can actually improve the brain's hearing cortex . "The study's results show that music training affects attention and memory, and helps children develop learning skills. In this way music training might lead to better learning across a number of fields," Trainor said in a statement. The effects of music education are even more obvious on children with difficulty in reading and writing and other language-related disabilities. So, whether you can play a good piece of music or not, it's likely that your years of music lessons have prepared your brain for all the speeches, emails, and adult conversations that are part of your life today. We should help make sure that children today have the same opportunities for music, and help out by volunteering with or donating instruments to your school's music education department. Compared with children who haven't taken music lessons, musically-trained children   _  .
sing better do better in exams recognize sounds better response more quickly