TWINS STUDY: Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence.

A large sample of Swedish twins (N = 10,500) was used to investigate the genetic architecture of the associations between intelligence and performance on three musical auditory discrimination tasks (rhythm, melody and pitch). . . . Genetic modelling showed that the covariation between the variables could be explained by shared genetic influences. Neither shared, nor non-shared environment had a significant effect on the associations. . . .

The results suggest that positive correlations among musical aptitudes result from both genes with broad effects on cognition, and genes with potentially more specific influences on auditory functions.

It seems, then, that introducing or expanding a music program in a school doesn’t mean that the existing students will become better at calculus.