“Evidence suggests that long-term musical involvement reaps cognitive rewards–in language skills, reasoning and creativity–and boosts social adjustment.
Music exercises the brain. Playing an instrument, for instance, involves vision, hearing, touch, motor planning, emotion, symbol interpretation–all of which activate different brain systems.”
According to Norman M. Weinberger, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California at Irvine, musical experiences help to shape the brain, and “[depriving] children of [music’s] intellectual, personal and social benefits . . . by failing to foster musicality, our society is wasting its potential.”
It’s an oldie goldie, but you can read the rest of the original interview from September 2000.