How playing an instrument benefits your brain - Anita Collins

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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.

Lesson by Anita Collins, animation by Sharon Colman Graham.

Did you know that every time
musicians pick up their instruments,

there are fireworks going off
all over their brain?

On the outside,
they may look calm and focused,

reading the music and making the precise
and practiced movements required.

But inside their brains,
there's a party going on.

How do we know this?

Well, in the last few decades,

neuroscientists have made
enormous breakthroughs

in understanding how our brains work
by monitoring them in real time

with instruments like
fMRI and PET scanners.

When people are hooked up
to these machines,

tasks, such as reading
or doing math problems,

each have corresponding areas of the brain
where activity can be observed.

But when researchers got
the participants to listen to music,

they saw fireworks.

Multiple areas of their brains
were lighting up at once,

as they processed the sound,

took it apart to understand elements
like melody and rhythm,

and then put it all back together
into unified musical experience.

And our brains do all this work
in the split second

between when we first hear the music
and when our foot starts to tap along.

But when scientists turned
from observing the brains

of music listeners to those of musicians,

the little backyard fireworks
became a jubilee.

It turns out that while listening
to music engages the brain

in some pretty interesting activities,

playing music is the brain's equivalent
of a full-body workout.

The neuroscientists saw
multiple areas of the brain light up,

simultaneously processing
different information

in intricate, interrelated,
and astonishingly fast sequences.

But what is it about making music
that sets the brain alight?

The research is still fairly new,

but neuroscientists
have a pretty good idea.

Playing a musical instrument

engages practically every area
of the brain at once,

especially the visual,
auditory, and motor cortices.

As with any other workout, disciplined,
structured practice in playing music

strengthens those brain functions,
allowing us to apply that strength

to other activities.

The most obvious difference between
listening to music and playing it

is that the latter requires
fine motor skills,

which are controlled
in both hemispheres of the brain.

It also combines the linguistic
and mathematical precision,

in which the left hemisphere
is more involved,

with the novel and creative
content that the right excels in.

For these reasons,
playing music has been found

to increase the volume and activity
in the brain's corpus callosum,

the bridge between the two hemispheres,

allowing messages to get across the brain
faster and through more diverse routes.

This may allow musicians to solve problems

more effectively and creatively,
in both academic and social settings.

Because making music also involves
crafting and understanding

its emotional content and message,

musicians often have higher levels
of executive function,

a category of interlinked tasks

that includes planning, strategizing,
and attention to detail

and requires simultaneous analysis
of both cognitive and emotional aspects.

This ability also has an impact
on how our memory systems work.

And, indeed, musicians exhibit
enhanced memory functions,

creating, storing, and retrieving memories
more quickly and efficiently.

Studies have found that musicians appear
to use their highly connected brains

to give each memory multiple tags,

such as a conceptual tag,
an emotional tag,

an audio tag, and a contextual tag,

like a good Internet search engine.

How do we know that all these benefits
are unique to music,

as opposed to, say, sports or painting?

Or could it be
that people who go into music

were already smarter to begin with?

Neuroscientists have explored
these issues, but so far,

they have found that the artistic
and aesthetic aspects

of learning to play a musical instrument

are different from any other activity
studied, including other arts.

And several randomized studies
of participants,

who showed the same levels

of cognitive function
and neural processing at the start,

found that those who were exposed
to a period of music learning

showed enhancement in multiple
brain areas, compared to the others.

This recent research about
the mental benefits of playing music

has advanced our understanding
of mental function,

revealing the inner rhythms
and complex interplay

that make up the amazing
orchestra of our brain.