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One-year-old infants who participate in interactive music classes with their parents demonstrate some signs of brain development.

They show earlier and more sophisticated brain responses to music, communicate better, and smile more, according to a new study.

"Many past studies of musical training have focused on older children," says Laurel Trainor, lead author of the study and director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind. "Our results suggest that the infant brain might be particularly plastic with regard to musical exposure."

In the study, groups of babies and their parents participated in one of two types of weekly music instruction for six months.

One music class involved interactive music-making and learning a small set of lullabies, nursery rhymes and songs with actions. Parents and infants worked together to learn to play percussion instruments, take turns and sing specific songs.

In the other music class, babies and parents played at various toy stations while recordings from the popular Baby Einstein series played in the background.

Before the classes began, all the babies had shown similar communication and social development and none had previously participated in other baby music classes.

Infants who participated in the interactive music classes with their parents showed earlier sensitivity to the pitch structure in music. Especially, they preferred to listen to a version of a piano piece that stayed in key, versus a version that included out-of-key notes.

However, infants from the passive listening classes did not show the same preferences.

Even their brains responded to music differently. Infants from the interactive music classes showed larger and/or earlier brain responses to musical tones.

Moreover, babies who participated in the interactive classes showed better early communication skills, like pointing at objects that are out of reach, or waving goodbye. Socially, these babies also smiled more, were easier to soothe, and showed less distress when things were unfamiliar or didn't go their way.

The findings were published recently in the scientific journals Developmental Science and Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.