Practical Practitioner

By: Pam Egan, FNP-C CDE

Making your kids smarter with music

Two recent studies address possible environmental influences on children’s mental ability. In a study of secondhand smoke, Cincinnati researchers tested 4,399 kids age 6 and 16 for cotinine, a marker for exposure to tobacco smoke that is created when the body breaks down nicotine.

As the researchers reported in the January issue of “Environmental Health Perspectives,” children whose blood tested high for cotinine tended to score lower on tests of reading and reasoning, such as math tests. The higher the cotinine levels, the lower the scores. Exactly why tobacco smoke may influence the test scores is unknown, but preclinical studies suggest that smoke can alter the structure of the nervous system.

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Music C’td?

Another study, reported in the August 2004 issue of “Psychological Science,” found that 6-year olds who took music lessons for one year gained more points on IQ tests than their peers who did not take music classes. University of Toronto researchers randomly assigned 144 kids to music lessons (keyboard or singing), drama lessons, or no extracurricular classes. The children took standard IQ tests before and after the year-long program. Children in the music groups had a gain of 7 IQ points, compared with about 4 points in the other groups.

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This article was originally published May 9, 2005 in The St. Tammany News.