Page 17 - Summer 2010

necessarily visual attention. Whether visual memory is superior in musicians is
3,6
8 neously-occurring sounds. Visuospatial
skills and certain math skills are also
superior in young musicians,9 as is their
performance on executive-function
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or egg question arises—does musical training stimulate prowess in these skills or are people who already excel in such arenas more likely to pick up an instru- ment? Some compelling evidence to sup- port the former scenario comes from cor- relational studies. If inherent skill X leads to a predisposition toward music, there should be no particular relationship between extent of X prowess and years of musical study. However, such relation- ships indeed exist. To name a few, the length of musical training in children is predictive of vocabulary knowledge and
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The extent to which musicians identify emotion in voices or melodies exceeds that of non- musicians,7 as does the ability to form distinct auditory streams from simulta-
a matter of some debate.
tasks.
Despite these findings, the chicken
nonverbal reasoning skills.
A variety of
IQ measures are associated with duration
of music lessons in primary-school chil-
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dren. The other strong bit of evidence
that music training leads to brain differ-
ences comes from longitudinal studies.
After one year of musical training in chil-
dren, auditory discrimination and fine
motor skills increase,13 and after three
years, improvements in vocabulary and
non-verbal reasoning skills are seen.11 Even shorter periods of training result in increases in reading and pitch discrimina- tion compared to children who were randomly selected to receive painting instruction.14
The musician brain
As we all know, the organ of music is “located immedi- ately above the external angle of the eye and, when it is very developed, results in square foreheads,”—Franz Joseph Gall, quoted in Bentivoglio15 (Fig. 2). Maybe. But foreheads aside, it stands to reason that, given the many behavioral advan- tages in musicians, there must be parts of the brain that— either structurally or functionally—differ in musicians. Efforts to localize and quantify these differences date back at least a hundred years,15 with anecdotal accounts going back even further. The convolutions of Beethoven’s brain were said to be “twice as numerous and the fissures twice as deep as in
ordinary brains,”—Johann von Seyfried, quoted in Spitzka. More recently, imaging techniques have revealed struc- tural differences in a variety of musician-brain regions. Just a few examples: gray matter volume of professional musicians
is greater than in amateur musicians, who in turn have
greater volume than non-musicians, in auditory, visuospatial
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and motor regions of the brain. Somatosensory cortical
areas mapped to the left hand are larger than those mapped
to the right hand (and compared to either hand in non-musi-
cians) in string-instrument musicians, tracking with the
much larger demands for precise left-hand movement in
16 Acoustics Today, July 2010
Fig. 2. The music organ, labeled “tune” here, is not far from “time” and “mirthfulness.” People with very large
tune organs, among other things, “learn tunes by hearing them sung once; sing in spirit and with melting
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pathos;...sing from the soul to the soul.” From Fowler and Fowler, 1889. University of Michigan Library.
Electronic resource courtesy of
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individuals to take up music.
Functional differences—measured by neurophysiologi-
cal and functional imaging techniques—add more evidence of musicianship’s role in shaping the brain. Oscillatory gamma-band activity in the brain, related to attention and
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memory, is enhanced in musicians. A host of cortical
evoked neurophysiological responses22-24 and cortical activa- tion patterns25 are enhanced in musicians compared to non- musicians. Speeded maturation of cortical potentials is seen
White matter in the pyramidal tract is more
string players.
structured in pianists than non-musicians.
dinal study supports the idea that it is music training itself that induces structural brain enhancement in musicians, rather than existing brain differences encouraging certain
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A recent longitu-