Minna Huotilainen (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Effects of formal and informal musical training

This talk will cover the work done with EEG and MEG in Cognitive Brain Research Unit at University of Helsinki on the topics of formal and informal musical training on adolescents, children, infants and even fetuses. The research consists of several experiments in different age groups as well as one longitudinal research effort. These studies show music as a means of changing the very early and very automatic brain processes of auditory perception towards higher accuracy, resulting in changes throughout the auditory pathway even visible in attentive and conscious processes.