Content area
Full Text
Playing music involves many different tasks in one's brain—seeing and understanding notes on a page, listening to your own melody as well as the others around you, and manipulating the instrument to make the sound, not to mention how music can make you feel. The brain has complex visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, and emotional tasks that it does simultaneously to make music.
Music and Changes in Brain Structure
Several studies have demonstrated anatomic differences in brains comparing musicians and nonmusicians, in both children and adults.1,2 Not surprisingly, these studies show changes in auditory and sensorimotor areas. Interestingly, there have also been studies showing anatomic differences in other areas of the brain, including inferior frontal regions, multimodal integration regions, and the corpus collosum.3,4 This fascinating finding suggests that music-making changes the structure of your brain in many ways, not just in those areas directly involved in listening to the sounds or pressing the keys.
The studies on anatomic differences in brain structure are largely cross-sectional, and although interesting, they do not answer the question of whether preexisting biological traits or intense music training result in these anatomic differences. Longitudinal, case-controlled studies are emerging in the literature. One study from Schlaug et al.5 showed increased grey matter density in school-age children receiving 15 months of musical training, compared to children who did not receive musical training. Another study from Habibi et al.3 found that compared to children in a sports program and those not involved in any structured program, children in a music program had measurable differences in their macro and microscopic brain structure based on magnetic resonance imaging scans at the beginning and the end of the study period. Specifically, they had different rates of maturation in the cortical thickness in their temporal lobe, and a higher fractional anisotropy in parts of their corpus collosum. This was a longitudinal study over 2 years beginning when the children were age 6 years. The children played string instruments and were engaged in ensemble practice and performances for about 6 to 7 hours per week.3,4 It is fascinating to imagine the ways that the brain structure changes with a relatively simple intervention like musical instruction, practice, and performance.
Music and Changes in Brain Function
Besides the structural changes that...