Enhancing emotion-regulation and well-being with musical training in disadvantaged children: a neuroscientific cross-cultural investigation

Emotion regulation(ER) is a crucial resource in offsetting the impact of emotional responses that are elicited automatically by environmental events. However, an extensive body of research has shown that some environmental factors, such as poverty, can harm ER healthy development. In fact, poverty during childhood is associated with chronic stress caused mainly by caregiver depression and other life stressors, which increases, in short-term, conduct and school achievement difficulties, and in long-term, the risk of emotional psychopathology and physical illness in adulthood. According to OCDE(2015),the effects of poverty are observed mostly on school achievement, in which more than 30% of students repeated a grade in the primary, lower secondary, or upper secondary school, and this number is similar in two Portuguese speaking countries, Brazil and Portugal. In other words, repeating a scholar grade in both countries is positively associated with low family socioeconomic and cultural status. Moreover, differently, from children with higher social and economic status, the majority of children in poor communities have no support to cope with their academic or emotional difficulties. Evidence suggests that musical training(MT) can provide to disadvantaged children a means of reaching their full potential through the power of music. In congruence, several studies showed that MT is accompanied by positive benefits on “cold” cognitive functions, such as intelligence, attention, memory, language, and consequently, in academic achievement. More recently, behavioral and neuroscientific findings have revealed that benefits of MT might rely not only on “cold” cognitive function, but also on “hot” cognition, such as empathy, social, emotional comprehension, psychosocial well-being, and self-esteem. In another neuroscientific investigation with musicians and non-musicians, and they found higher brain activity in areas concerned with emotional and cognitive information only in musicians. Specifically, these areas were related to ER, in particular to the reappraisal strategies, which is the capacity to mentalizing and reinterpretation of the meaning of an event or stimulus. Although associations between MT and cognitive and emotional functioning have been described in the literature, it is still unclear how the development of musical skills modulates the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying ER, and it is also unclear whether music-induced ER can benefit children under poverty-related risks. This type of study seems to be crucial since better emotional competencies would improve children’s capacity to cope with stress and the lifetime academic and professional success. Thus, the primary objective of our project is to analyze the effect of group MT at the level of the neurophysiological reactivity underlying the ER(as measured by the monitoring of the electrodermal, cardiac and respiratory systems),observing whether children who underwent MT would improve their reappraisal capacity.

Agenda 2030:
To the extent of our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the effectiveness of an MT intervention to promote ER in poor environments children cross-culturally. This study aims to provide equal opportunities for children improve their emotional regulation capacities in two different countries, which can reduce inequality for the included sample among countries since emotional dysregulation, when not treated, can have long term impact in academic and professional outcomes. Moreover, this project also aims to develop an MT that is effective in promoting better emotional capacity could be applied as an inclusive and equitable quality education promoting lifelong learning and opportunities overseas.