How musical training shapes the brain

Brain scanning technologies have permitted neuroscientists to observe the activity of living brains, and the results are clear:

Musicians are different.

For instance, in one study, people who played musical instruments as children showed more robust brainstem responses to sound than did non-musicians.

Other studies have reported that kids assigned to receive musical training developed distinctive neural responses to music and speech,  evidence of more intense information processing that was linked with improvements in the discrimination of pitch and the segmentation of speech.

And it's not just a matter of differences in brain activity. There are also differences in brain volume.

If you examine the brain of a keyboard player, you’ll find that the region of the brain that controls finger movements is enlarged.

Moreover, brain scans of 9- to 11-year old children have revealed that those kids who play musical instruments have significantly more grey matter volume in both the sensorimotor cortex and the occipital lobes.

In fact, musicians have significantly more grey matter in several brain regions, and the effects of music lessons seem to increase with the intensity of training.

One study compared professional keyboard players with amateurs. Although both groups had music training, the professionals practiced twice as much. The professionals also had significantly more grey matter volume in a number of brain regions.

  

Read the full article at: Parenting Science. 

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Benefits from AudioBooks

Did you ever heard the term "audio-books"? Sounds crazy, isn't it? Well, this time I would like to introduce them to you. 

Audio-books, as it names implies, gives you the ability of reading a book without reading. The only thing you have to do is put some earphones, or put it on a bluetooth speaker and you will listen to the book while doing other activities. Something really great about some audio-books, is that, not all the voices are interpreted by the same person, each character has an individual voice, and I think that's fantastic. Some of the benefits of listening to audio-books are: 

Imagination, Spark your own sense of creativity and problem-solving abilities as you are exposed to new stories, thoughts and ideas.

Better Health, Relieve and reduce stress, tension and worries, and slow your heart rate as your thoughts are absorbed in a good story.

Save Time, Get more reading done by multi-tasking – Listen while doing the laundry, washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, etc. 

Definitely using audio-books is a power tool, if you are the kind of person that listens to music while doing home tasks or other tasks that does not require enough attention. Yo can use some headphones or connect your device to a portable speaker and get it done.

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