Musicians Have Stronger Brain Connections Than Non-musicians

Research suggests that the brains of musicians have stronger structural and functional connections compared to those of non-musicians, irrespective of innate pitch ability.

The brain gets shaped in dramatic ways with years of musical training. Absolute pitch is the ability to identify a tone without a reference, and only a minority of musicians possess this. However, it is still unclear how this ability impacts the brain.

Leipold et al. compared the brains of professional musicians to non-musicians. Some possessed absolute pitch, while some didn’t.

Findings showed that, surprisingly, absolute pitch might shape the brain in more subtle ways as there were no great differences between the brains of musicians with absolute pitch ability and without.

For both types of musicians, the auditory regions in both brain hemispheres had stronger functional connectivity (brain regions' synchronized activity). They also had stronger white matter connections between auditory regions and lobes involved in various types of high-level processing.

Results also showed that musicians that began their training at a younger age had stronger structural connections than musicians with a later start.

These results demonstrate how musical skills are showcased in our brain and how experience shapes the brain, especially early in life.

Source-Medindia