Is Music Good Cross-Training?
Neuroscientists have detected a number of structural differences in the brains of musicians; these findings suggest that musical training can influence brain organization and ability.
- Several areas of the brain are larger in adults who play musical instruments than in non-musicians.
These include areas such as the primary motor cortex and the cerebellum, which are involved in movement and coordination, as well as the corpus callosum, a large band of nerve fibers that links the two hemispheres of the brain. - A larger proportion of the auditory cortex (which brings music and speech into conscious experience) responds to piano tones in adult musicians as compared with non-musicians. The earlier the age at which the musicians had begun lessons, the more enlarged the area. Follow-up research revealed that the brains of musicians are especially attentive to the sounds of the instruments they play’ a larger area of a violinist’s brain responds to hearing violin sounds than it does to hearing trumpet sounds, and vice versa.
- In trained violinists, the area of the somatosensory cortex (which interprets touch information) corresponding to the four fingers used to press down on violin strings is enlarged.
- Trained musicians tend to use more of the left, analytical half of the brains for processing music than non-musicians.
Scientists are also studying whether the brain changes seen in musicians enhance mental functions not associated with music—in other words whether music serves as a kind of cross-training for the brain.
- Adults with musical training perform better on word memory tests than other adults.
- Preschoolers who have had piano lessons for about six months perform better than their counterparts on puzzle-solving tests.
- Second-graders who played special computer math games and took piano lessons scored higher on math tests than students who played the same computer games but had English language instruction rather than piano lessons.
- Children who had musical training for one to five years had significantly better verbal memory than schoolmates without such training—and the longer the training, the better the verbal memory. The researchers suggest that music has a kind of cross-training effect: The extra stimulation from studying music to the left hemisphere of the brain, the side that handles language, boosts its ability to handle other left-hemisphere functions, such as verbal learning.
“There’s no way to tell if such studies have something to do with specific cognitive functions involved in music and math,” said Tramo [Mark Jude Tramo, director, Harvard Medical School Institute for Music & Brain Science]. “Or they may relate to other so-called general purpose cognitive mechanisms like attention, memory, that are involved in language and all sorts of other cognitive activities. But they do suggest that music can tap into brain mechanisms involved in these other processes and con conceivably improve them. –Joan Stephensen, PhD
From : ACS's Award-Winning Publication
Chemistry, Winter 2004
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FN Lugemwa
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