To harness this power, he launched the transformative El Sistema movement, credited with rescuing thousands of Venezuelan children living in extreme poverty from a life of drug abuse and crime. This is the program that inspired the Harmony Project. 

One of El Sistema’s graduates is Los Angeles Philharmonic’s star conductor Gustavo Dudamel. “Music saved my life and has saved the lives of thousands of at risk children in Venezuela...like food, like health care, like education, music has to be a right for every citizen,” says Dudamel. 

Under his leadership, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra Angeles (YOLA) program was launched to provide a free community-based music education program inspired by the success of El Sistema. It provides students from underserved neighborhoods in LA with free instruments, intensive music training and academic support. One such neighborhood is the Rampart District, the country’s second most densely populated neighborhood with an average household income of $27,000, where YOLA implemented the YOLA at the Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) program. 

But the Harmony Project isn’t just a successful community program; it’s also a fertile ground for research into the impact of music education on the brain. Led by Dr. Nina Kraus at Northwestern University, the collaboration between researchers and the project leaders has demonstrated key insights.

Children who had stuck with the program for at least two years had stronger neural signals to speech sounds compared with students in music appreciation classes or no classes at all. Making music matters: simply listening isn’t enough to cause measurable brain changes. And although music is a powerful tool for neuroplasticity, the nervous system is resistant to change. That’s why it takes prolonged exposure and effort to reshape the brain. Active engagement is the key to turning on neuroplasticity in children and adults alike.

Partnering with the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, YOLA at HOLA also includes a research component. Led by this month's webinar panelist, Dr. Assal Habibi, a 5-year study was launched in 2012 to track how this program impacts the brains, cognitive and social development, and overall well-being and success of its students. Twenty-five kids aged 6-7 from the program were compared with kids who participated in either a sports training program or after-school enrichment program.

All the children were tested before any training with structural and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Electroencephalography (EEG), and a comprehensive battery of psychological and social tests. These tests gave the scientists the opportunity to look at the brains of the kids, along with the development of mental abilities and their social and emotional skills. Then, the kids came back for testing once a year for 5 years.

When the study began, the kids were no different from each other on any of the brain measures, psychological or social and emotional tests.  But in a follow-up study, scientists began to see differences. Kids in the music program were better at pitch perception and production, what we call musically-relevant skills, which is not that surprising. But they also showed more mature auditory pathways, meaning that they were better at processing all kinds of sounds, and measurable changes in the auditory regions of the brain.

They also had more connectivity between their right and left hemispheres, just like professional musicians, who have a bigger corpus callosum, the fiber tract that joins the hemispheres. Imagine the benefits that bigger leg muscles would give a sprinter: now imagine how more white matter, or connections between the hemispheres could give a kid an edge when it comes to being creative or integrating information.

The scientists also found that cognitive and executive function skills, like holding multiple ideas in mind at the same time, were better in the musically-trained kids. With functional imaging, the researchers discovered that the kids in YOLA at HOLA showed more activation in the frontal regions of the brain, which are critical for high-level thinking, during decision-making and other tasks that require focus.

You can learn more about the research that came out of the Harmony Project here in an informative website created and maintained by Dr. Nina Kraus and her lab.

To learn more about the partnership between YOLA at HOLA and the Brain and Creativity Institute, please join us on March 24, 2021 at 4pm EST/1pm PST for Music Training and Brain Development: An Innovative Community-Academic Partnership. This webinar will feature Assal Habibi, PhD, Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California and Elsje Kibler-Vermaas, VP of Learning at the LA Philharmonic as they discuss their partnership with the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra (YOLA) to study the effects of music training on brain development. Register here for more information.

Barbaroux, Dittinger and Besson 2019: Music training with Demos program positive influences cognitive funcions in children with low socio-economic backgrounds

Fasano et al. 2019: Short-Term Orchestral Music Training Modulates Hyperactivity and Inhibitory Control in School-Age Children: A Longitudinal Behavioral Study

Zuk and Gaab 2018: Evaluating predisposition and training in shaping the musicians brain: the need for a developmental perspective

Ireland, Parker, Foster, and Penhune 2018: Rhythm and Melody tasks for School-Aged Children With and Without Musical Training: Age-Equivalent Scores and Reliability

Kraus et al. 2018: Engagement in community music classes sparks neuroplasticity and language development in children from disadvantaged backgrounds

PhD scholarship: The University of Melbourne, Australia

NEA Research Labs funds transdisciplinary research teams grounded in the social and behavioral sciences, yielding empirical insights about the arts for the benefit of arts and non-arts sectors alike.

Over the next five years, Creative Forces®: National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Military Healing Arts Network intends to provide $2.5 million in new research funding.

NEA Research Grants in the Arts funds research studies that investigate the value and/or impact of the arts, either as individual components of the U.S. arts ecology or as they interact with each other and/or with other domains of American life.