Music and Intelligence

How Music Rewires the Brain and Possibly Elevates Human Intelligence

Is it true that playing music is linked to advanced intelligence? For most of my life I felt stigmatised due to lack of playing any musical instrument.[1] I read article, after article pronouncing that music is not merely an aesthetic pleasure but a sign of higher IQ. I now know it's one piece of the puzzle, but it doesn't define your intelligence.

Gödel, Escher, Bach

If Newton formulated the laws of motion, Bach did the same for counterpoint, encoding the principles of harmonic physics centuries before we had the neural imaging to understand their effect on the brain. His mind was not merely gifted but trained, honed by a lifetime of intellectual exertion in a language of his own invention.

Beethoven, whose late works, written in complete deafness, defy the boundaries of human perception. His brain, deprived of auditory input, compensated in ways modern neuroscience still puzzles over. That his Ninth Symphony, an explosive act of sheer will, was composed without him ever physically hearing it is not a romantic anecdote but a profound demonstration of cognitive adaptability. The structures of his mind, rather than deteriorating under sensory loss, recalibrated, reconfiguring his internal mechanisms to transform silence into symphony.

The truth of being of higher intelligence is more extraordinary, composers are engineers of perception, manipulating the raw material of time and sound with a rigor equal to the most exalted mathematicians, as Doug Hofstadter brilliantly showed in his Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece GEB.

What Science Reveals

Step into a neuroimaging lab monitoring musician's brains, and you’ll see something astounding. The brains of musicians are wired differently. Their corpus callosum, the bundle of fibers connecting the brain’s hemispheres, is measurably denser, allowing for rapid-fire communication between logic and intuition, order and chaos. Their auditory cortex is heightened, their motor skills sharper, their working memory leagues beyond the untrained mind. Studies have shown that musicians have a larger volume of grey matter in the motor cortex, which is involved in the precise movements required for playing instruments.

But the real revelation is what happens outside of music. Neuroscientists like Nina Kraus at Northwestern University have found that musical training enhances not just auditory processing but linguistic ability, memory retention, and even emotional intelligence. Children who study music show more advanced cognitive flexibility, a skill that correlates strongly with problem-solving and innovation. In short, it is claimed, music doesn't just make better musicians, it makes better thinkers.

Beyond the Charts

Beyond the petri dish of scientific data there are many examples of how music moves the mind. Derek Paravicini, a blind autistic with savant syndrome who, despite struggling with the simplest of daily tasks, can replicate entire concertos after a single hearing. His mind, constructed differently, did not suffer from its limitations, it expanded beyond them.

Or the case studies in Oliver Sacks’ neurological odysseys, the amnesiac who could remember nothing except the music of his youth, the Parkinson’s patients who found their tremors subdued by rhythm, the stroke survivors who, through melody, reclaimed fragments of their stolen selves.

It seems clear that music has a peculiar ability to burrow into the deepest recesses of the mind, reawakening what had been presumed lost.

The Cultural Crime of Neglecting Music

Given this overwhelming evidence, one must ask, why is music education so frequently dismissed as a luxury rather than the neurological boot camp it so clearly is? Ancient Greece understood this well, Plato did not regard music as a pastime but as a fundamental pillar of intellectual and moral development.

Today, nations with rigorous music education programs, such as Finland, South Korea, outperform many of their peers in some metrics of education achievement. In Finland, for example, primary school teachers receive approximately 350 hours of music education training, a testament to the nation's commitment to integrating music into its educational framework. Likewise, South Korean teachers undergo around 160 hours of music education training, reinforcing music as an essential element of cognitive development.

Some research suggests that these investments in musical training contribute to superior academic performance in subjects such as mathematics, science, and literacy, further cementing the role of music as a cognitive enhancer.

Causality?

However, it is important to acknowledge that while the correlation between music education and cognitive benefits is strong, there is ongoing debate about causality.

Do musically trained individuals perform better due to the cognitive demands of music, or is it that those with higher cognitive abilities are more likely to engage in music?

The brain is not a static ledger of facts, it is a living, pulsing composition, an ongoing act of acquiring new knowledge and rewiring neurons, unless we become couch potatoes, doom scrolling. Learning to play a musical instrument and read music can profoundly shape the brain. But the counterfactuals are equally strong. Just as reading (and understanding) complex books, learning a foreign language (especially Chinese or Japanese for Westerners, my bias!) or studying a hard to learn new subject, such as advanced mathematics or physics, requires focused effort, all of these tasks stretch our cognition.

Granted playing a musical instrument also engages motor skills, as does advanced level chemistry, studying medicine, and even tennis or computer games.

Some researchers argue that socioeconomic status and parental involvement play a role in access to music education, further complicating the discussion. Nevertheless, addressing these complexities only strengthens the argument for making music education more widely accessible.

Intelligence as Composition

Learning and improving cognition does not come about by being passive, but through engagement, discipline, struggle, precisely the qualities that define the minds of great composers, and of most disciplines, not only music.

So, how intelligent are composers? While their technical mastery and innovations are undeniable, empirical evidence for their advanced intellect remains inconclusive. Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky were undoubtedly extraordinary in their fields, but intelligence is a multifaceted concept that extends beyond musical prowess. And reading books such as The Lives of the Great Composers or Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile, and countless other biographies, does not convince me of their overall high intelligence.

Researchers argue that the cognitive demands of composition parallel those of high-level problem-solving, pattern recognition, and linguistic fluency, yet definitive studies comparing composers’ intelligence to other intellectual fields remain scarce.

What is clear, however, is that intelligence is not merely the accumulation of knowledge but the ability to reimagine, reinvent, and, in the face of adversity, compose anew, in any discipline.

Despite the counterfactuals, I believe that schools and communities should work to integrate music education as a core component of cognitive and cultural development. Policymakers should allocate funding to ensure equitable access to music programs. Parents and educators must advocate for curricula that recognize playing musical instruments, reading and composing music is an indispensable role in intellectual and cultural growth. The evidence is there, the question is whether we will listen.

Stay curious

Colin

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[1] Although I did build an AI music composer