For the study, the researchers assessed 27 children with cochlear implants for their ability to discern musical pitch -- how high or low a musical note is. Thirteen of the children had attended standard music classes at the Yamaha Music School, which has centres around the world.

Overall, Dr. Joshua Kuang-Chao Chen of Cheng Hsin General Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan, who led the study, found that the longer the children had taken music classes, the better their pitch perception.

The study, which is published in the journal Pediatrics, was not a clinical trial testing the effects of musical training on children with cochlear implants. So it does not prove that music classes can fine-tune sound perception in these children.

But the findings are in line with a past study which found that cochlear implant recipients who were assigned to musical training showed an improved ability to perceive musical timbre, or quality. Those study participants, however, had become deaf after they had learned to speak.

The current study, according to Chen and his colleagues, appears to be the first linking music classes to better music perception in children who became deaf before acquiring language.

It is important that children with cochlear implants learn to appreciate music, in part, because music and singing are a routine part of school, noted Dr. Lieber Po-Hung Li, another researcher on the study. 'The ultimate goal of the cochlear implantation is to help hearing-impaired children go back to the mainstream school,' Li told Reuters.