Piano practice also boosts cognitive and intellectual abilities, which is to say it makes you smarter and activates similar parts of the brain used in spatial reasoning and math.

Studying piano has also been shown to amazingly improve memory — particularly verbal memory — and build good habits like focus and perseverance, diligence and creativity.

Children who had a few years of piano study under their belts could remember twenty percent more vocabulary words than their peers.

And childhood musicians are better equipped later in life to retain information from speeches and lectures.

Playing piano has been shown to increase spatial-temporal ability, which figures heavily in math, science and engineering.

Regular music practice at an early age can even make structural changes to the brain that stay with you for the rest of your life, making your brain more efficient both while playing and in extra-musical endeavors.