It’s in its early stages, but a study by the DANA foundation is examining whether people interested in the arts are smarter to begin with, or if their intelligence is stimulated and improved by their exposure to the arts.
Here’s the abstract:
Learning, Arts, and the Brain, a study three years in the making, is the result of research by cognitive neuroscientists from seven leading universities across the United States. In the Dana Consortium study, researchers grappled with a fundamental question: Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter?
The study used brain imaging as well as behavioral studies to identify eight key points:
- An interest in a performing art leads to a high state of motivation that produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition.
- Genetic studies have begun to yield candidate genes that may help explain individual differences in interest in the arts.
- Specific links exist between high levels of music training and the ability to manipulate information in both working and long-term memory; these links extend beyond the domain of music training.
- In children, there appear to be specific links between the practice of music and skills in geometrical representation, though not in other forms of numerical representation.
- Correlations exist between music training and both reading acquisition and sequence learning. One of the central predictors of early literacy, phonological awareness, is correlated with both music training and the development of a specific brain pathway.
- Training in acting appears to lead to memory improvement through the learning of general skills for manipulating semantic information.
- Adult self-reported interest in aesthetics is related to a temperamental factor of openness, which in turn is influenced by dopamine-related genes.
- Learning to dance by effective observation is closely related to learning by physical practice, both in the level of achievement and also the neural substrates that support the organization of complex actions. Effective observational learning may transfer to other cognitive skills.
For the complete study information, go to the DANA web page devoted to the study.
You can also download a pdf file of the complete study here.