Whether it’s singing do-re-mi or strumming a guitar, making music is one of the best ways to stimulate a young mind.
Even if children give up their music lessons when they hit their anxious teens, cognitive neuroscientists say that early musical ability lifelong benefits. Playing music can help children to read better, store memories and pronounce different languages.
In a recent study, scientists unveiled further evidence supporting this brain-building tactic. To learn music early in life make the brain more connected, which causes neural plasticity, which can enhance neurological abilities outside of music.
“This study, among other things, shows how the human brain is shaped by experience,” says co-author Lutz Jäncke. Reverse. Jäncke is a neuropsychological researcher at the University of Zurich.
In the study, Jäncke and his team found that musical brains have stronger structural and functional connections compared to those of non-musicians, regardless of their innate pitch ability.
These increased interconnections extend between and within brain hemispheres and were particularly strong in brain regions responsible for processing sounds such as music and speech.
“… the human brain is shaped by experience. “
Music is not the only practice that gives rise to these connections, nor is interconnection a benefit that only young people experience. Researchers at any age observed similar, positive brain changes through other activities – including ballet, golf, and chess. Learning challenging skills has benefits for the brain, no matter where you start.
“The findings are important for any kind of expertise in all areas where you can improve through intensive training,” says co-author Simon Leipold. Reverse. Leipold is a psychiatry researcher at Stanford University.
“Through training, we can change the way our brains are wired.”
The findings are Monday in the Journal of Neuroscience.
What’s new – Previous studies investigating how music affects the structure and function of the brain have yielded divergent results. Some believe that certain parts of musicians’ brains are larger and that they have extraordinary listening abilities. However, many studies were relatively small, limiting its broader implications.
Leipold, Jäncke and their colleagues have 103 professional musicians and 50 non-musicians, the largest musician sample size to date for a brain image study. Fifty-one of the musicians had absolute pitch, the rare and sought-after ability to identify a tone without reference.
The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging, structural magnetic resonance imaging, and diffusion tensor imaging to calculate resting connections within the participants’ brains.
Using ‘state of the art’ machine learning techniques, the team compared the brain scans between musicians, musicians with absolute pitch and non-musicians – by finding similar brain networks between those who played music.
How does the brain differ from musicians?
The two music groups showed ‘remarkably similar networks’ in all analyzes, Jäncke explains. Contrary to expectations, the team did not see a significant difference between ordinary musicians and those with absolute pitch in all functional or structural connectivity measures.
All the musicians’ brains were very big more structurally and functionally connected as non-musicians, especially in the brain regions responsible for speech and sound (especially the auditory corticosteroids of both hemispheres). These connections “undoubtedly” enhance the group’s musical abilities, Leipold explains.
The musical group also showed stronger connections from the auditory cortex to other brain areas in the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortex that are known to be involved in the control of higher cognitive functions such as memory, working memory, and executive functions.
Why it matters – This finding suggests that stronger connections of musical expertise may have ‘transfer effects’ in other domains such as language learning or intelligence, although other research suggests that the differences are ‘minimal’, ”explains Leipold.
“The earlier the musicians started practicing music, the stronger these connectivity,” says Jäncke. The age at which someone picks up a violin or trombone is an important aspect of ‘shaping brain and installing extraordinary functions’, he adds.
“Early music training can affect the brain at different levels, locally and globally,” says Leipold.
Such positive neural connections can also result from other activities, not just music.
“We have seen similar findings in our studies on golfers, ballet dancers, interpreters and chess players,” says Jäncke.
The time training musically is not the only factor that plays.
“The current state of research indicates a very complex interplay between genetics and environmental factors in the emergence of musical expertise,” says Leipold.
Finally, the findings reinforce evidence that learning new things, especially a musical instrument, has a tremendous positive effect on the growing brain. Leipold himself learned to play the piano as a child, although he now notes that he is “far from a highly educated musician.”
“If someone then tells me about the possibility of changing the wiring of my brain, I might have spent more time practicing the piano and less time on the soccer field,” Leipold reflects.
Abstract: Professional musicians are a popular model for exploring experiential plasticity in human large-scale brain networks. A minority of musicians have an absolute pitch, the ability to name a note without reference. The study of musicians with absolute pitch provides insights into how a very specific talent is reflected in brain networks. Previous studies of the effects of musicality and absolute pitch on large-scale brain networks have yielded highly heterogeneous findings regarding the localization and direction of the effects. This heterogeneity was probably influenced by small samples and many different methodological approaches. Here, we conducted a comprehensive multimodal assessment of the effects of musicality and absolute pitch on intrinsic functional and structural connectivity using a variety of general and modern multivariate methods in the largest sample to date (n = 153 female and male ) human participants; 52 absolute tone musicians, 51 non-absolute tone musicians and 50 non-musicians). Our results show a strong effect of musicality in inter- and intrahemispheric connectivity in both structural and functional networks. It is important that most effects can be repeated in both musicians with and without absolute pitch, compared to non-musicians. However, we found no evidence for an effect of absolute pitch on intrinsic functional or structural connectivity in our data: the two groups of musicians showed remarkably similar networks in all analyzes. Our results suggest that long-term music training is accompanied by robust changes in large-scale brain networks. The effects of absolute pitch on neural networks can be subtle, requiring very large samples or task-based experiments to be detected.