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VIRTUALISATION Musical instruments improve brain
VIRTUALISATION Musical instruments improve brain | Musical instruments improve brain |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Saturday, 18 April 2009 | |
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Page 1 of 2   
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Christian Gaser (Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.) and Gottfried Schlaug (Department of Psychiatry, University of Jena, Germany) conducted the study. Their paper, “Brain Structures Differ between Musicians and Non-Musicians” was published in the Journal of Neurology (October 8, 2003, 23(27):9240-9245). They state in their abstract, “From an early age, musicians learn complex motor and auditory skills (e.g., the translation of visually perceived musical symbols into motor commands with simultaneous auditory monitoring of output), which they practice extensively from childhood throughout their entire careers.” The researchers used “voxel-by-voxel morphometric” technique to test differences in motor, auditory, and visual differences in the brains of musicians, specifically keyboard players, and non-musicians. Voxel-by-voxel morphometry is a computational technique that measures differences in local concentrations of brain tissue through multiple brain (magnetic resonance image, [MRI]) scans. They used 31 six-year-old children and had each receive weekly keyboard lessons for 15 months or not. All the children were matched with respect to socioeconomic background, gender, and other relevant characteristics. The children did not have any abilities that would predispose them to play keyboards better than the other children. Fifteen received the lessons, and sixteen didn’t. Page two concludes. |
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