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Impact of Practice of musical Instruments on Brain




Albert Einstein began playing the violin when he was 6-years-old. By the age of 13, he was playing Mozart's sonatas. Einstein once said, "Life without playing music is inconceivable to me. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music ... I get most joy in life out of music."
                         

                  Musical training has the potential to change brain structure and function when practiced for a long period of time. The anatomical differences have been found between a musician’s and a non-musician’s auditory and motor cortices and neural connectivity linking these areas.

Practicing musical instrument can lead to structural changes after only 15 months in early childhood. These changes correlate with improvements in certain motor and auditory nerve cells and structural Brain changes in Hippocampus, an area devoted to learning and memory processes.

According to a Research at Brain and Creativity Institute, Southern California, which involved children between the age of 6 to 7, the results showed that these children were highly attentive to melodies and had stronger brain response to differences in pitch after 2 years of training.
Playing a musical instrument involves multiple components of the
·     Central (brain and spinal cord) and
·     peripheral (nerves outside the brain and spinal cord) nervous systems. 

As a musician plays an instrument, motor systems in the brain control both gross and fine movements needed to produce sound.  The sound is processed by auditory circuitry, which in turn can adjust signalling by the motor control centers.  In addition, sensory information from the fingers, hands and arms is sent to the brain for processing.  If the musician is reading music, visual information is sent to the brain for processing and interpreting commands for the motor centers.  And of course, the brain processes emotional responses to the music as well! 

Brain scanning studies have found that the anatomical change in musicians' brains as an adult is related to the age when training began and ideally it should begin by the age of 7 as learning at a younger age causes the most drastic changes.

Brain circuits are involved in musical improvisation are shaped by systematic training leading to less reliance on working memory and more extensive memory within the brain. Some brain changes occur with automation of task and acquisition of highly specific sensorimotor and cognitive skills required for various aspects of musical expertise.

Intense musical training generates new processes within the brain and a range of effects on creativity, cognition and learning. These insights suggest potential new roles for music training including fostering plasticity in the brain and an alternative tool in education and treating range of learning disabilities.

  

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