When Plato said that music gives “wings to the mind,” he might have been onto something. Recent studies increasingly point to the power of music to shape the brain and boost its functioning. But despite a flurry of research documenting the positive effects of music lessons on the brain, there have been few controlled, longitudinal studies like Kraus’s that follow kids year after year and examine music’s impact on brain structure and function as it’s happening. Instead, most of the studies to date have compared the brains of musicians and non-musicians—or of students who have studied instruments to those who have not—and inferred that brain enhancements in music-makers stem from music training

Kraus’s study is part of a new wave of longer-term, forward-looking studies honing in on the neurological impact of school and community-based music training—as opposed to private music lessons, which, according to Kraus, have been the basis of most past studies—particularly on lower-income students who have not previously had access to music education, so study subjects begin on a level playing field. Kraus and her colleagues in Los Angeles will spend the next few years gauging not only how group music instruction affects the way the brain processes sound, but also how it influences classroom and language skills among the elementary school kids enrolled in the Harmony project. Kraus is also evaluating the impact of public school-based music instruction on adolescent brain development in a multi-year study focusing on inner-city high school students in Chicago.

Meanwhile, another five-year study at the University of Southern California Brain and Creativity Institute is tracking cognitive, emotional, and social development in at-risk elementary school children in the gang-riddled Rampart District of Los Angeles who receive high-intensity music training through the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles program.

And in yet another ongoing five-year study, neuroscientists at the University of California, San Diego are watching to see how intense music ensemble training affects the brain development of children in San Diego’s under-served Chula Vista school district, specifically by looking at how it influences connections in the brain. “We clearly believe that if someone becomes better at language perception, something in the brain has changed,” says John Iversen, Ph.D., a cognitive neuroscientist at UCSD and lead researcher of the SIMPHONY (Studying the Influence Music Practice has On Neurodevelopment in Youth) project. “By tracking the same kids for a series of years, we can watch the whole process unfold.”

Though these studies are far from over, researchers, as well as the parents and teachers of the study subjects, are already noticing a change in the kids who are studying music. Preliminary results suggest that not only does school and community-based music instruction indeed have an impact on brain functioning, but that it could possibly make a significant difference in the academic trajectory of lower-income kids.