Music listening activates musicians' brains in a more symmetrical manner than nonmusicians', according to new research from the Finnish Centre for Interdisciplinary Music Research (CIMR) at the university of Jyväskylä. This may reflect a more efficient communication across brain hemispheres in musicians. Indeed, the demands of musicianship, such as bimanual coordination of finger movements, may require greater connectivity between motor regions of the two cerebral hemispheres for the speed and efficiency necessary for music performance. This greater connectivity is then observed in more symmetrical brain activity. The findings emphasize that the specific posture and kinematics involved in instrument playing may be crucial factors in shaping the brain responses during music listening. The study was published in the September issue of the journal PLOS ONE.
The research team recorded the brain activity of 18 musicians and 18 nonmusicians while they attentively listened to music of different genres, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at the AMI Centre of Aalto University, in Finland. "By using this more realistic approach to studying the brain than most controlled experiments in the field of neuroscience, there is no need to rely on participants' ability to self-report, which could constrain the very brain processes we try to study", explains Iballa Burunat, the lead author of the study.
Interestingly, statistical analyses also revealed that keyboardists' brain responses were more symmetrical than those of violin players. "Piano playing requires a more mirrored and synchronized use of both hands and fingers than in violin playing, which may be guiding these difference", explains prof. Petri Toiviainen from the University of Jyväskylä, a co-author of the study. Not only motor, but also visual areas behaved more symmetrically in the group of keyboardists compared to violinists, "a difference perhaps arising from unequal hand-eye coordination requirements between these groups", adds prof. Elvira Brattico from Aarhus University, Denmark, a co-author of the study. When reading music, keyboardists require efficient visual scanning strategies for continuously acquiring multiple-part visual information and monitoring their synchronized hand movements. Therefore, different symmetry profiles seem to reflect specific competences required for mastering different instruments.
These findings have broader implications for a better understanding of how experience in one modality (in this case, motor control) can drive changes in the neural processing in another modality (listening). Brain plasticity, which refers to the ability of the brain to change and adapt as a result of experience, has become an area of increasing interest in neuroscience. "Although we can't prove causality, the specific musical training is thought to drive this symmetry: in other words, musical expertise may cause permanent functional changes in the way musicians perceive and process music at the neural level", Iballa Burunat concludes. All in all, our musical experience seems to be crucial in how our brains listen to music.