UC San Diego’s "Simphony" Research Earns Grammy Foundation Support

A UC San Diego study of the impact of music training on the brain and behavioral development in children has been awarded a grant of nearly $20,000 by the Grammy Foundation. The San Diego Youth Symphony's Community Opus program works in partnership with the UC San Diego SIMPHONY project to better understand how music helps young minds develop and grow. Photos courtesy of San Diego Youth Symphony. "SIMPHONY," the grant award says, "is a unique collaboration designed to understand how music training affects children's brains and the general cognitive skills like language and attention. It is the first study of its kind, and will track 60 children annually starting at ages 5-10 as they engage in ensemble music training using an extensive battery of neural and behavioral testing." SIMPHONY, short for Studying the Impact Music Practice Has On Neurodevelopment in Youth, is a collaboration among researchers at UC San Diego's Center for Human Development and the Institute for Neural Computation. "We're grateful for the Grammy Foundation's support of this important research," said John Iversen, who directs the five-year longitudinal study in close collaboration with Terry Jernigan, director of the Center for Human Development.