What Relationship do Instruments have with the Brain?
Playing instruments requires motor skills which are controlled by both hemispheres of the brain. The mathematical precision of the left and creativity of the right are both involved when it comes to making music. This is why it has been found that playing instruments increases the activity of corpus callosum (the connection between the two hemispheres). This causes the brain to pass messages faster therefore becoming more creative and effective both academically and socially.
How Playing an Instrument Benefits Your Brain
A University of Montreal study has proven through research that musicians tend to mentally alert than most people. The lead researcher in the study, Simon Landry lauds the impact music has on our sensory organs as she discovers that musicians have faster auditory, tactile, and audio-tactile reactions. Specifically, professional pianists tend to have better movement, verbal memory, visuospatial abilities, and literacy skills because of the processes associated with the instrument.
Learning an instrument at an early age causes the strongest effects and even brief training periods could have a lasting effect. Research has shown children who took musical classes for just a little over twelve months showed great functional brain changes. This is because learning an instrument increases gray matter volume in the brain and strengthens the long-range connection between them. This sharpens speech processing and learning and is of even greater benefit to children with dyslexia. Playing instruments helps in protecting against some complications that come with growing older like the reactions being slower and dementia.
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Academically, playing instruments help to strengthen memory and reading ability. The Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University confirms that this is possible because music and reading are done through a common cognitive and neural mechanism. The level of creativity and emotions involved in playing instruments helps to strengthen the brain’s executive function. Therefore boosting retention, decision making, planning, and problem-solving, all of which require both cognitive and emotional aspects of the brain. Research has shown that both child and adult piano lessons significantly increase blood flow to the life hemisphere thus providing a burst of energy. Most instruments also require concentrating on more than one thing. This subconsciously trains your brain to process multiple things effectively.
Through the decades, neuroscientists have made tremendous progress in understanding the workings of the brain. They observed that the brain has distinct areas that respond to various tasks like reading, solving math, playing an instrument, listening to music, etc. During their experiments, when they got to listening to music, they saw no coordinated reaction from a particular area as every area of the brain seem to respond in what looked like “fireworks”. When they left the listeners to the people playing musical instruments, the fireworks further increased to what seemed like a party going on in the brain. They discovered that while listening to music engages the brain to some extent, playing music tasks the brain to the equivalent of a full workout.
Conclusion
Learning to play instruments has a very different effect on the brain compared to any other discipline, structured practice, or art. It strengthens those brain functions and helping us to channel that strength effectively to other activities. Playing instruments is no doubt one of the greatest ways that the brain benefits.
Feature photo by Andrea Piacquadio
