January 26, 2021, 14:12 Updated: January 26, 2021, 14:36
Musicians who train from an early age have ‘super connected’ brains, a study has found.
Photo: Getty
Scientists are discovering the “powerful” effects of music on brain networks.
Musicians who started young, and who continued their training, have found more ‘connected’ brains, a new large-scale study has found.
The research, led by experts from Stanford University School of Medicine, used a sample of 153 musicians and non-musicians.
Among the musicians, 52 had a perfect pitch – the ability to name a note without reference – and 51 did not. The other 50 participants in the study were non-musicians.
Scientists have found a big difference in brain structure in young musicians, whether on piano, clarinet, trumpet or violin (or indeed, any other instruments within the such families).
Click here to listen to the Classic FM Revision playlist on Global Player, the official Classic FM> app
In particular, the team found that those who started making music later in life had stronger brain connections than those who started making music later in life.
The study’s author, Dr Simon Leipold, explained that the longer musicians train, the greater the mental impact. “Musicians who started training at a younger age had stronger structural links than beginning musicians,” he said.
Read more: Brains of jazz and classical musicians work differently, study reveals>
“These results show how knowledge shapes the brain, especially early in life, and how developed musical skills are represented in our brains,” said Dr Leipold.
The team also found that musicians had stronger structural connections and function, whether they had a perfect pitch or not, than non-musicians.
Published in journal JNeurosci, the paper used the largest sample to date to compare musicians’ brains with and without perfect pitch, but found no strong differences.
“Instead,” says Dr. Leipold, “a whole pitch can shape the brain in more subtle ways.”
Read more: Music analysis makes your brain more efficient, research reveals>
Both groups of musicians showed a stronger action link, and stronger white subject connections between the study areas of the brain and the areas involved in high-level processing.
“Our results show that long-term music training is associated with strong changes in brain networks on a large scale,” the team wrote in their paper.
Children, on average, start playing at 7.6 years of age – and popular thinking states that children are more likely to pick up a musical instrument, and continue to play it, if taken. into it when they are of primary school age.
But, this is not to say that there is never an age limit on starting your musical journey. Here are some clever lyrics from John Suchet of FM Class and Alexander Armstrong, who both picked up an instrument on the other side 30.