SCANS of children鈥檚 brains before and after musical training show that the brain changes associated with musical ability only come with hard work.
The brains of adult musicians have previously been shown to have a different structure from those of non-musicians, but it was unclear whether this was innate or something that had developed through practice. The new results back the idea that practice is crucial.
鈥淭his is the first paper showing differential brain development in children who learned and played a musical instrument versus those that did not,鈥� says of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who led the research (The Journal of Neuroscience, ).
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Schlaug鈥檚 team tested musically untrained 6-year-olds, matched for socioeconomic background and gender, 15 of whom were selected at random to receive weekly keyboard lessons for 15 months, while 16 didn鈥檛. MRI scans showed that auditory and motor areas of the brain linked with hearing and dexterity grew larger in those who had the lessons. These children also did better at tasks involving manual dexterity related to keyboard skills, and in their ability to discriminate between melodies.
The two groups did not show any differences in other skills sometimes thought to be related to musical ability, such as arithmetic. Schlaug is continuing to monitor them in case it takes longer for these more 鈥渄istant鈥� skills to emerge.
鈥淭his study shows, through a 鈥榖efore and after鈥� design, that a particular set of learning activities is both the necessary and sufficient causal explanation for resulting differences in brain characteristics,鈥� says John Sloboda of Keele University in the UK, a champion of practice over innate genius. Sloboda believes that, like muscle, brain tissue can change with 鈥渆xercise鈥�.