Musicians have better brains

Performing music at a professional level is perhaps one of the most complex of human accomplishments. As a sensory stimulus, music is both exceedingly intricate and structured along several dimensions. Moreover, making music requires the integration of multimodal sensory and motor in­formation together with precise monitoring of motor performance via auditory feedback.

In the context of western classical music, musicians must reproduce highly controlled movements almost perfectly and with high reliability. These specialized sensory-motor skills require extensive training periods over many years, starting in early infancy and passing through stages of increasing physical and strategic complexity.

So how does this all happen?

Eckart Altenmüller discusses how the brain is rewired through neuroplasticity.   His research focuses on the neurobiology of emotions and movement disorders in musicians as well as motor and sensory learning. Since 2005 he has been President of the German Society of Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine and a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences.

The studies have shown that musician's brains are "different", which is a really interesting discovery.

Read the full article:  Apollo’s Gift and Curse: Brain Plasticity in Musicians

Credits: Photo courtesy of Sabine Sauermaul