How to optimally stimulate the developing brain is still unclear. Executive functions (EF) exhibited substantially stronger far transfer effects in children who learned to play a musical instrument than in children who acquired other arts.
What is crucially lacking is a large-scale, long-term genuine randomized controlled trial (RCT) in cognitive neuroscience, comparing musical instrumental training (MIP) to another art form and a control group. Collected data of this proposal will allow, using machine learning, to build a data-driven multivariate model of children's interconnected brain and EF development over the first 2 years of their academic curriculum (6-8 years), with or without music or other art training.
School grade 3P/4P (3rd and 4th year of elementary school (6-8-year-old children)
Right-handedness
Sufficient Mastery of the French Language
Able to give oral informed consent (child)
Non-consent (children and or parents)
Repeated or skipped a class with respect to standard curriculum
Not corrected/severe hearing deficits
Not corrected/severe vision deficits
School of Health Sciences Geneva
Lead sponsor
University of Geneva, Switzerland
Collaborator
University of Lausanne Hospitals
Collaborator