What ear training does to your brain: cognitive benefits of music training in adults
A review of the evidence that musical training, including ear training in adulthood, produces measurable changes in working memory, executive function, and brain structure.
The idea that musical training is good for the brain has long since left the lab and entered popular culture. Some of what is repeated about it is well-supported; some is overstated; some is actively wrong. This article tries to lay out what the current literature actually says about the cognitive effects of music training in adults, with a particular focus on the kinds of training — auditory discrimination, pitch tracking, harmonic listening — that ear training emphasizes.
What is well-established
A growing body of evidence supports the basic claim that sustained musical training, including in adulthood, is associated with measurable improvements in specific cognitive domains. The 2017 review by Schellenberg and Weiss summarizes the broader literature; more recent work has extended the findings into adult and older-adult populations [1].
Three findings are robust:
1. Working memory. Musicians, as a group, perform better than non-musicians on working-memory tasks, particularly auditory working-memory tasks. A 2020 review in Frontiers in Psychology on music training, working memory, and neural oscillations concluded that the working-memory advantage in musicians is consistent across studies and is supported by changes in oscillatory neural activity that mediate working-memory processes [2]. The implicated brain regions include the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia (particularly the putamen), and parietal regions involved in attention.
2. Executive function. Music training is associated with improvements on measures of inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and selective attention. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis in Brain and Cognition found moderate effects of musical-instrument training on executive functions in healthy older adults, with the strongest effects on processing speed [3]. The same review found null or weak effects on selective visual attention and visual working memory — pointing to a domain-specific rather than fully general benefit.
3. Auditory perceptual acuity. Trained musicians show enhanced auditory frequency discrimination, more refined neural encoding of pitch (as measured by the frequency-following response in the auditory brainstem), and better speech-in-noise perception. These effects are present in adult-onset musicians and grow with cumulative training time.
Crucially, several of these benefits are observable in late-onset adult learners, not just in those who began as children. A 2024 study published in Imaging Neuroscience found that healthy older adults who began musical-instrument training showed measurable working-memory improvements and subcortical brain-structure preservation across a four-year follow-up — concrete evidence that it is not too late to start [4].
What is more tentative
A few claims that get repeated but deserve more nuance:
“Music training raises IQ.” The claim that music training causes a general increase in fluid intelligence is much weaker than its popular framing suggests. Schellenberg’s own work, often cited as evidence for an IQ effect, has been re-examined; subsequent meta-analyses (Sala & Gobet 2017, Mosing et al. 2014) have found that the apparent effects largely reflect selection bias — children with higher cognitive ability are more likely to pursue and persist in music training. Causal effects on general intelligence are small to absent in well-controlled studies. [5]
“Music training transfers broadly to academic skill.” The transfer claims are similarly mixed. There is decent evidence for transfer to verbal memory, reading, and language skills (especially phonological processing). The evidence for transfer to mathematics, spatial reasoning, and overall academic achievement is weaker and inconsistent.
“Music makes you smarter.” As a slogan, this is too coarse to be useful. As a claim that specific trained capacities (auditory working memory, pitch processing, attentional control during listening) improve and may show some near transfer to related skills, the evidence is reasonable. As a claim about general intelligence, the evidence is weak.
What ear training contributes to this picture
Most of the cognitive-benefits literature studies instrumental training — playing an instrument over years, which combines auditory discrimination with motor control, score reading, memorization, and ensemble coordination. Ear training is one slice of that bundle. The question of whether ear training alone produces the same neural and cognitive effects as full instrumental training is less well-studied.
What can be said with confidence:
- Ear training directly trains auditory perceptual acuity, working memory for pitch sequences, and attention to fine acoustic detail — three of the cognitive domains where the broader music-training literature shows the strongest effects.
- Auditory working memory in particular is heavily exercised by ear-training tasks. Holding an interval or short melodic pattern in mind long enough to label or transcribe it is exactly the working-memory operation tested in standard auditory working-memory paradigms.
- The overlap is sufficient that ear training, sustained over months to years, plausibly produces a meaningful subset of the cognitive benefits seen in full instrumental training. Direct studies confirming this remain limited; the inference rests on the strong overlap of trained domains.
It is honest to say: ear training has not been studied as exhaustively as full instrumental training, and we cannot say with high confidence that 20 minutes of daily ear-training drills produces the same cognitive profile as four hours of daily instrumental practice. What we can say is that the cognitive operations ear training exercises are the same operations the broader literature finds to be improved by music training generally, and there is no biological reason to expect those specific gains to require the motor component.
A neuroplasticity note
Modern neuroplasticity research has moved past the old “critical period closes at age X” model. Adult brains remain plastic; the rate and extent of change differ from childhood, but the kind of change is similar in nature. Hyde and colleagues’ classic 2009 study, often cited for child music-training effects, has now been complemented by adult-training work showing structural and functional brain changes after training periods as short as several weeks [6]. Sustained training over longer periods produces changes that are observable on standard MRI.
The practical implication: the clock is not against an adult learner who wants to begin or resume ear training. The cognitive returns are real and the brain remains responsive.
Why this matters for how an app frames its value
Ear-training apps often advertise on the promise of musical skill — “learn to hear chords,” “transcribe songs by ear.” The cognitive-benefits angle is sometimes underused. For some learners — particularly older adults, those returning to music after a long break, or those who never played an instrument formally — the framing of “practice that maintains and may strengthen specific cognitive functions” is as compelling as the musical framing.
This is not a marketing trick. The cognitive literature is real, the effects are domain-specific (so claims should be domain-specific), and adult-onset training does produce measurable gains. Communicating that honestly is fair to learners and accurate to the science.
The honest summary
Musical training, including ear training, is associated with reliable improvements in auditory working memory, executive function (especially processing speed in older adults), and auditory perceptual acuity. The benefits are domain-specific, not a general IQ boost. They are observable in late-onset adult learners. The brain remains plastic enough to support these gains across the lifespan, though the speed and magnitude of change diminish gradually with age.
If you are training your ear with the primary goal of becoming a better musician, the cognitive side-effects are a fair bonus. If you are training your ear with the primary goal of supporting cognitive function, the literature supports your choice — within the domain-specific limits laid out above.
References
Schellenberg, E. G., & Weiss, M. W. (2013). Music and cognitive abilities. In The Psychology of Music (3rd ed.). Academic Press. For a more recent synthesis: Musical training, neuroplasticity and cognition. PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5619060/ ↩︎
Music Training, Working Memory, and Neural Oscillations: A Review (2020). Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00266. PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7047970/. See also editorial: Music Training, Neural Plasticity, and Executive Function. PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7438867/ ↩︎
The effects of musical instrument training on fluid intelligence and executive functions in healthy older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis (2024). Brain and Cognition. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278262624000149 ↩︎
Never too late to start musical instrument training: Effects on working memory and subcortical preservation in healthy older adults across 4 years (2024). Imaging Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1162/IMAG.a.48. See also: Musical instrument training program improves verbal memory and neural efficiency in novice older adults. PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7927292/ ↩︎
Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2017). When the music’s over. Does music skill transfer to children’s and young adolescents’ cognitive and academic skills? A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 20, 55–67. Mosing, M. A., Madison, G., Pedersen, N. L., Kuja-Halkola, R., & Ullén, F. (2014). Practice does not make perfect: No causal effect of music practice on music ability. Psychological Science, 25(9), 1795–1803. ↩︎
Hyde, K. L., Lerch, J., Norton, A., Forgeard, M., Winner, E., Evans, A. C., & Schlaug, G. (2009). Musical training shapes structural brain development. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(10), 3019–3025. For adult-onset training effects: Herholz, S. C., & Zatorre, R. J. (2012). Musical training as a framework for brain plasticity: behavior, function, and structure. Neuron, 76(3), 486–502. ↩︎