When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What’s going on? Anita Collins explains the fireworks that go off in musicians’ brains when they play, and examines some of the long-term positive effects of this mental workout.
The connections between brain research and music have been ongoing for the past two decades, but there are actually a lot of different areas within the research, and it is easy to confuse them.
Firstly there is the area of music and the brain, which is about how we process music in our brains. Daniel Levitin wrote a great book called This is Your Brain on Music (http://daniellevitin.com/publicpage/books/this-is-your-brain-on-music/) which is all about how we process music.
Then there is the area of music therapy and the brain, which is about how we can use music to assist people who have had brain injuries, physical trauma or have been born with a disability, to improve their physical and cognitive function. It is also being used extensively with people who are suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Oliver Sacks wrote a great book called Musicophillia (http://musicophilia.com) and Norman Doige has a book on brain plasticity called The Brain that Changes itself (http://www.normandoidge.com/normandoidge.com/MAIN.html) that talks about the power of music therapy.
Then there is the area of music education and the brain, which is about how music learning can impact on general brain development in children and adults. In the research it is called music training and is generally understood to be the formal and sequential learning of music, through playing music as well as appreciating and listening to it. There are a number of research institutes that are working in this part of the field, the Dana Foundation (http://www.dana.org), the BRAMS Institute (http://www.brams.org/en/) and the Music, Mind and Wellbeing Institute (http://cmmw.unimelb.edu.au).
Keeping up with the research is tricky if you are not a neuroscientists. Here is a resource that can keep you up to date with the research (https://www.facebook.com/BiggerBetterBrainsProject)