theArtsFund Blog

Language is attributed to the left side of the brain along with math.

However, in The Descent of Man, naturalist Charles Darwin called this process, "an instinctive tendency to acquire an art."

While it has been shown that each side of the brain dominates different functions, it also has been shown that it is the strength of the organization of networking is what is most important to excel. Great mathematicians or great musicians tend to excel because of their brain's ability to utilize both sides of the brain equally rather than show dominance for one side or the other. http://bit.ly/GS1TWH

 Math and music are closely connected in many ways. Rythm for example, is time measurement. Note values are specified by fractions of time measurement. This considered it makes sense, that students, who do well in music and begin at an early age, also excel in math. One theory is that music strengthens the neural chords that transmit information between the two hemispheres of the brains.

During a four-month study at the University of California Irvine, students who trained on a piano keyboard and played with a specially designed computer math game  scored 27% higher on math problems than did a control group that took English classes and played the same game.

''Piano instruction is thought to enhance the brain's 'hard-wiring' for spatial-temporal reasoning, or the ability to visualize ratios, fractions, proportions and thinking in space and time,'' says Gordon Shaw, professor emeritus of physics at the University of California-Irvine, who led the three-member research team.

100% of the 1st place winning team of the 2011 Los Angeles County Chapter Math Counts Competition from Palos Verdes Intermediate School (PVIS), plays a musical instrument. Not coincedentally, each of the eight-team members from PVIS also placed in the top ten of individual competition. http://bit.ly/apY07c

More impressive is the 1997 study conducted at the graduate school of education and information studies at UCLA that found that eighth- and 10th-graders with high arts exposure performed better academically than students with low exposure and were less likely to drop out of school.

Just as our abilities are strongest when both halves of the brain work together, education and academic excellence is strongest when the study of arts and music are considered equally important as math and science. 

This is one reason theFund considers supporting the arts not only integral to supporting education but a necessity to support education.

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