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Whether singing do-re-mi or strumming a guitar, making music is one of the best ways to stimulate a young mind.
Even though children drop out of music lessons when they reach their distressed adolescence, cognitive neuroscientists say cultivating musical abilities early on has lifetime benefits. Playing music can help children read better, store memories, and pronounce different languages.
In a recent study, scientists reveal more evidence supporting this brain development tactic. Learning music early in life actually makes the brain more connected, inducing neural plasticity capable of improving neurological capacities beyond music.
“This study, among other studies, demonstrates how the human brain is shaped by experience,” said study co-author Lutz Jäncke. Reverse. Jäncke is a researcher in neuropsychology at the University of Zurich.
In the study, Jäncke and his team found that musical brains have stronger structural and functional connections than non-musicians, regardless of their innate capacity for tone.
This increased interconnection extends between and within the hemispheres of the brain and was particularly strong in areas of the brain responsible for processing sounds such as music and speech.
“… the human brain is shaped by experience. “
Music isn’t the only practice that inspires these connections, nor is the interconnection a benefit that only young people feel. The researchers observed similar positive brain changes induced by other activities – including ballet, golf, and chess – at any age. Learning any stimulating skill has benefits for the brain no matter when you start.
“The results are important for any type of expertise in any area where one can improve through intensive long-term training,” says study co-author Simon Leipold. Reverse. Leipold is a psychiatric researcher at Stanford University.
“By training we can change the way our brains are wired.”
The results were published Monday in the Journal of Neuroscience.
What’s up – Previous studies exploring how music influences the structure and function of the brain have produced varying results. Some suggest that parts of musicians’ brains are larger and show extraordinary listening skills. However, many studies have been relatively small, which limits their wider implications.
To move the field forward, Leipold, Jäncke and their colleagues recruited 103 professional musicians and 50 non-musicians, the largest musician sample size to date for a brain imaging study. Fifty-one of the musicians possessed the absolute pitch, the rare and coveted ability to identify a sound without reference.
The team used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, structural magnetic resonance imaging, and diffusion tensor imaging to calculate connections in participants’ brains.
Using “cutting edge” machine learning techniques, the team subsequently compared brain scans between musicians, musicians with absolute pitch, and non-musicians – finding similar brain networks between those who played music.
How is the brains of musicians different?
The two groups of musicians showed “surprisingly similar networks” in all analyzes, Jäncke explains. But contrary to expectations, the team did not see a significant difference between regular musicians and those with absolute pitch in any measure of functional or structural connectivity.
All the brains of musicians were more structurally and functionally connected than non-musicians, especially in areas of the brain responsible for speech and sound (particularly the auditory cortices of both hemispheres). These connections “undoubtedly” enhance the band’s musical abilities, says Leipold.
The musical group also showed stronger connections between the auditory cortices and other brain areas of the frontal, parietal and temporal cortex, known to be involved in the control of higher cognitive functions such as memory, working memory, and executive functions.
Why this is important – This finding suggests that stronger ties of musical expertise may have “transfer effects” on other areas such as language learning or intelligence, although other research suggests the differences are “minimal. », Explains Leipold.
“The earlier musicians started with musical practice, the stronger these connectivities,” says Jäncke. The age at which someone picks up a violin or trombone is an important aspect of “shaping the brain and installing extraordinary functions,” he adds.
“Early music training could affect the brain on different levels, locally and more globally,” says Leipold.
These positive neural connections can also come from other activities, not just music.
“We have seen similar results in our studies of golfers, ballet dancers, performers and chess players,” says Jäncke.
Musical training time is not the only factor at play.
“The current state of research suggests a very complex interplay between genetics and environmental factors in the emergence of musical expertise,” says Leipold.
Ultimately, the findings strengthen the evidence that learning new things, especially a musical instrument, has overwhelmingly positive effects on brain growth. Leipold himself learned to play the piano as a child, although he now notes he is “far from a highly skilled musician”.
“If someone had told me about the possibility of changing the wiring in my brain, maybe I would have spent more time practicing the piano and less time on the football field,” recalls Leipold.
Abstract: Professional musicians are a popular model for studying experience-dependent plasticity in large-scale human brain networks. A minority of musicians have absolute pitch, the ability to name a tone without reference. Studying musicians at absolute pitch provides insight into how very specific talent is reflected in brain networks. Previous studies of the effects of musicality and absolute pitch on large-scale brain networks have produced very heterogeneous results regarding the location and direction of effects. This heterogeneity was probably influenced by small samples and very 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 advanced multivariate methods commonly used in the largest sample to date (n = 153 women and male human participants; 52 absolute pitch musicians, 51 non-absolute pitch musicians and 50 non-musicians). Our results show robust effects of musicality in inter- and intra-hemispheric connectivity in structural and functional networks. Importantly, most effects were reproducible both in musicians with and without absolute pitch compared to non-musicians. However, we did not find evidence of an effect of absolute pitch on intrinsic functional or structural connectivity in our data: the two groups of musicians showed surprisingly similar networks in all analyzes. Our results suggest that long-term musical training is associated with robust changes in large-scale brain networks. The effects of absolute height on neural networks can be subtle, requiring the detection of very large samples or task-based experiments.
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