Five months after we are conceived, music begins to capture our attention and wire our brains for a lifetime of aural experience.

At the other end of life, musical memories can be imprinted on the brain so indelibly that they can be retrieved, perfectly intact, from the depths of a mind ravaged by Alzheimer's.

In between, music can puncture stress, dissipate anger and comfort us in sadness.

But for all its beauty, power and capacity to move, researchers have concluded that music is little more than ear candy for the brain if it is consumed only passively.

If you want music to sharpen your senses, boost your ability to focus and perhaps even improve your memory, the latest word from science is you'll need more than hype and a loaded iPod.

You gotta get in there and play. Or sing, bang or pluck.

"The Mozart effect? That's just crap," says Glenn Schellenberg, a psychologist at the University of Toronto who conducts research on the effect of music and musical instruction.

Even the author of the 1993 study that set off the commercial frenzy says her group's findings -- from an experiment that had college students, not babies, listen to Mozart -- were "grossly misapplied and overexaggerated."

Psychologist Frances Rauscher has long since moved on to explore the effect of active musical instruction on cognitive performance.

The upshot of their work is clear: Learning to make music changes the brain and boosts broad academic performance.

Findings across the board suggest that spending money and time on music lessons and practice is a solid investment in mental fitness.

True, listening to music we like does makes us feel good. Positive mood, in turn, increases focus and attention, which improves performance on many tests of mental sharpness. But the performance-enhancing effect, Schellenberg says, lingers for no more than about 10 minutes after the music stops.

Learning to play, he has found, is a far better bet. In a 2004 study, he and his colleagues randomly assigned 144 six-year-olds to receive instruction in keyboard, voice, drama or nothing.

After a year, kids who got keyboard or voice lessons showed a three-point IQ boost on average over the kids taking drama or no lessons at all.

It's a modest improvement but one that may build on itself since IQ is a reliable predictor of a child's performance in school.

Better performance in school typically leads to more and better schooling -- which, in turn, further increases IQ.

For those receiving musical instruction, "there is evidence that music changes the brain in positive and permanent ways," says Laurel Trainor, professor of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour, and director of the auditory development lab of McMaster University.

How and why music might enhance cognitive powers has eluded scientists so far. But they do have some clues.

Learning to make music engages and demands co-ordination among many brain regions, including those that process sights, sounds, emotions and memories, says Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, a Harvard University neurologist.

Years ago, Schlaug found a glaring and suggestive difference between the brains of 30 professional musicians and 30 nonmusician adults of matched age and gender.

In the musicians, the bundle of connective fibres that carry messages between the brain's right and left hemispheres was larger and denser on average than that of their nonmusical peers.

This suggested not only that musicians might be able to more nimbly react to incoming information but also that their brains might be more resilient and adaptable, allowing right and left hemispheres, which specialize in separate functions, to work better together.

Schlaug and colleagues also found that the musicians who had begun their musical training before the age of seven showed the most pronounced differences -- suggesting an early start might rewire the brain most dramatically.

Other studies have found that music instruction may indeed make you smarter.

A team led by Trainor reported that in kids chosen randomly to get a tightly structured instrumental training called the Suzuki method, brain responses were two to three years more mature on average than those in children not taking music lessons.

Electrical signals travelled more swiftly and efficiently through the brains of the Suzuki-trained kids.

The same kids also showed improved performance on tasks that required sustained attention and the ability to hold information in memory long enough to execute complex tasks -- what neuroscientists call working memory.

"What happens in music lessons is they're fun," Trainor says. "But at the same time, they're very demanding ... It takes a tremendous amount of attention. It trains kids how to accomplish things, and it trains memory as well. All that is going to make you better at learning."