[GELORA45] Music Making as a Tool for Promoting Brain Plasticity across the Life Span

[Jonathan Goeij jonathango...@yahoo.com [GELORA45]]

Penelitian ini mungkin menerangkan mengapa mereka yang musik memiliki
Learning to play a musical instrument in childhood can result in long-lasting 
changes in brain organization. The first study that examined neuroanatomical 
differences between musicians and nonmusicians reported larger anterior corpus 
callosum in musicians (Schlaug and others 1995a), a finding that has since been 
replicated by different research groups using different methodological 
approaches (Oztürk and others 2002; Lee and others 2003; Hyde and others 2009). 
The corpus callosum plays an important role in interhemispheric communication, 
which underlies the execution of complex bimanual motor sequences. Moreover, 
musicians who began training at an early age (≤7 years) had a significantly 
larger corpus callosum compared to musicians who started later (Fig. 2 A and 
B). A similar finding was also observed in motor regions. In particular, the 
depth of the central sulcus, often used as a marker of primary motor cortex 
size, was larger on both hemispheres but most pronounced on the right 
hemisphere for musicians compared to nonmusicians, possibly due to years of 
manual motor practice emphasizing the nondominant hand (Amunts and others 1997; 
Schlaug 2001). As was observed for the corpus callosum, there was a positive 
correlation between the size of the primary motor cortex and the onset of 
instrumental musical training (used as a surrogate for intensity and duration 
of training).
...Intensive musical training can also be associated with an expansion of 
functional representation of finger or hand maps. In string players, for 
example, the somatosensory representations of their playing fingers were found 
to be larger compared to those of nonmusicians (Pantev and others 2001). This 
effect was more pronounced for the fifth digit, which was rarely used in the 
nonmusician group. Musicians who had begun training early in life demonstrated 
larger cortical representation of their left fifth digit compared to those who 
started to play their instruments later (after 13 years), who in turn had 
larger representations than the nonmusicians. In addition to these enhanced 
somatosensory representations, musicians also have larger representations for 
tones than do nonmusicians. In one study, musicians who had started playing at 
a young age demonstrated the largest cortical representations (Pantev and 
others 1998), although this enlargement was evident for only piano tones but 
not pure tones. In contrast, a study by Schneider and others (2002) reported 
increased representation for pure tones, up to twice as large in professional 
musicians compared to nonmusicians. In that study, amateur musicians showed an 
intermediate increase over nonmusicians but only for tones less than 1000 Hz. 
In sum, increased training and exposure to musical stimuli may lead to 
enlargement of representation in the somatosensory and auditory regions.
...
Music Making as a Tool for Promoting Brain Plasticity across the Life Span