At 8:45 PM -0400 10/5/08, timothy price wrote:
FYI
Musicians use both sides of their brains more frequently than average people
Vanderbilt University
Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:11 UTC
Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often
felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think
differently than the rest of us. Vanderbilt University psychologists
have found thatprofessionally trained musicians more effectively use
a creative technique called divergent thinking, and also use both
the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily
than the average person.
Hi, Timothy, and everyone else. This may turn out to be a valid
study, but I'd sure like to read the study itself rather than this
press release. But in any case I would have to question whether the
experiment was set up to identify cause and effect, or just
correlation.
It is interesting, however, that the experimenters seem to have
identified "musicians" as "instrumentalists," and ignored singers as
an important class of "musicians."
They apparently also made no effort to differentiate between training
that MUSICIANS would identify as more creative--i.e., composition and
jazz improvisation--and training simply as performers.
A preliminary study at best, but perhaps interesting if it were to
lead to studies in rather more detail.
As to the basic hypothesis, it's already accepted by most musicians
just on an observational basis, and might be considered proving the
obvious.
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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