KINGWOOD ARTS ACADEMY

Are you interested in helping your children strengthen their brain functions? 

 

How about enhancing the bridge between their two cerebral hemispheres for messages to move faster and through more diverse routes? 

 

Are you interested in these benefits for yourself? 

 

If so, read on! 

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All of us are aware or have at least heard that learning how to play a musical instrument is good for our brains. But how good is it? What happens in our brains when we learn how to play an instrument? What are the real benefits and why is it worth doing it? I have summarized in eight key points the Ted-Ed video titled 'How Playing an Instrument Benefits Your Brain' by Anita Collins. For those who want to dive deeper, you have the full transcription where the basic concepts are explained. Don’t miss out on this information - it is important and fascinating!

 

Source: How playing an instrument benefits your brain - Anita Collins Ted-Ed video. 

 

8 Key points

(If you read nothing else make sure you read this!)

 

1. Neuroscientists have found that although listening to music engages the brain in some pretty interesting activities, moreover, playing music is the equivalent of a full-body workout. 

2. When measuring brain activity, they saw that while people play a musical instrument, multiple areas of the brain light up simultaneously processing different information in intricate, interrelated, and astonishingly fast sequences. 

3. But what is it about making music that sets the brain alight? Playing a musical instrument engages every area of the brain at once.  

4. As with any other workout, disciplined structured practice playing music strengthens those brain functions allowing us to apply those strengths to other activities. 

5. The main difference between listening to music and playing it, is that the latter involves fine motor skills which are controlled in both hemispheres of the brain. 

6. Playing music has been found to increase the volume and activity in the brain corpus callosum, the bridge between the two hemispheres. This allows messages to move across the brain faster and through more diverse routes. 

7. Since playing music also involves crafting and understanding the emotional content and message, musicians often have higher levels of executive function: interlinked tasks that include planning, strategizing, and attention to detail requiring simultaneous analysis of both cognitive and emotional aspects. 

8. This ability also has an impact on how our memory systems work and indeed musicians exhibit enhanced memory functions: creating, storing, and retrieving memories more quickly and efficiently. 

 

Full transcription: 

 

In the last few decades, neuroscientists have made enormous breakthroughs in understanding how our brains work by monitoring them in real-time with technologically advanced instruments. When they connect people to these machines, they can observe brain activity as they perform tasks such as reading or solving math problems. When the researchers got the participants to listen to music, they saw multiple areas of their brains lighting up at once as they process the sound. But when scientists turned from observing the brain from music listeners to those of musicians, they saw an incredible amount of brain activity in multiple areas of their brains. It turns out that while listening to music engages the brain in some pretty interesting activities, playing music is the equivalent of a full-body workout. The neuroscientists saw multiple areas of the brain light up simultaneously processing different information in intricate, interrelated, and astonishingly fast sequences.  

But what is it about making music that sets the brain alight? Playing a musical instrument engages every area of the brain at once especially the visual, auditory, and motor cortices and, as with any other workout, disciplined structured practice in playing music strengthens those brain functions allowing us to apply those strengths to other activities. The main difference between listening to music and playing it is that the latter involves fine motor skills which are controlled in both hemispheres of the brain. It also combines the linguistic and mathematical precision in which the left hemisphere is more involved with the novel and creative content that the right excels in. For these reasons playing music has been found to increase the volume and activity in the brain corpus callosum, the bridge between the two hemispheres. Allowing messages to get across the brain faster and through more diverse routes. This may allow musicians to solve problems more effectively and creatively in both academic and social settings.  

Because making music also involves crafting and understanding their emotional content and message, musicians often have higher levels of executive function. A category of interlinked tasks that include planning, strategizing, and attention to detail and requires simultaneous analysis of both cognitive and emotional aspects. This ability also has an impact on how our memory systems work and indeed musicians exhibit enhanced memory functions, creating, storing, and retrieving memories more quickly and efficiently. Studies have found that musicians appear to use their highly connected brains to give each memory multiple tags such as a conceptual tag, an emotional tag, an audio tag, and a contextual tag like a good internet search engine. 

 

So how do we know that all these benefits are unique to music as opposed to say sports or painting, or could it be that people who go into music were already smarter, to begin with? Neuroscientists have explored these issues but so far, they have found that the artistic and aesthetic aspects of learning to play a musical instrument are different from any other activity studied, including other arts.  

In several randomized studies of participants who showed the same levels of cognitive function and neuro processing at the start found that those who were exposed to a period of music learning showed enhancement in multiple brain areas compared to the others.  

This recent research about the mental benefits of playing music has advanced our understanding of mental function, revealing the inner rhythms and complex interplay that make up the amazing orchestra of our brain. 

 

I hope you enjoyed this fascinating read and, if you haven't already, I encourage you to watch the video. 

 

Unleash your passion and creativity (and brain development) through music! 

 

Josan Pinto 

Director 

Kingwood Arts Academy 

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