Neuroscientific studies on mathematic cognition and music listening from infancy to early adulthood: the state of the art

Abstract

This review includes theoretical and methodological considerations about the research lines in the most recent studies about the relationships between neuroscience, music listening and mathematical learning from infancy to early adulthood, in both formal and informal learning contexts. International literature,
including meta-analyses, experimental research articles, and conference dissertations, is examined in order to determine the actual state of the art.
Overall, evidence supports hypotheses that music choices of young adults are related to peculiar neural activations and cognitive achievements, affecting physiological arousal, mood, attention and memory, not least school performance.
Selected studies are divided into four categories and exposed in synthetic tables, due to the interdisciplinarity and extent of the subject: 1- Music perception and cognition; 2- Mozart effect; 3- Music choices and education strategies; and 4- Mathematics ability and intelligence. After a brief introduction to frame each table theoretically, the main experimental techniques, research hypotheses, and related outcomes of each work are exposed.