Zen and the Art of Brain Wiring

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Musical notes terrorize a helpless steak

SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- The brain waves of professional musicians respond to music in a way that suggests they have an intuitive sense of the notes that amateurs lack, researchers said Wednesday.



Neuroscientists, using brain-scanning MRI machines to peer inside the minds of professional German violinists, found they could hear the music simply by thinking about it, a skill amateurs in the study were unable to match.

The research offers insight into the inner workings of the brain and shows that musicians' brains are uniquely wired for sound, researchers said at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

Neuroscientists often study how we hear and play music because it is one of the few activities that use many functions of the brain, including memory, learning, motor control, emotion, hearing and creativity, said Dr. Robert Zatorre of the Montreal Neurological Institute.

"It offers a window onto the highest levels of human cognition," Zatorre said.

In a study by researchers at the University of Tuebingen, the brains of eight violinists with German orchestras and eight amateurs were analyzed as they silently tapped out the first 16 bars of Mozart's violin concerto in G major.

Brain scans showed professionals had significant activity in the part of their brains that controlled hearing, said Dr. Gabriela Scheler of the University of Tuebingen.

"When the professionals move their fingers, they are also hearing the music in their heads," Scheler said.

Amateurs, by contrast, showed more activity in the motor cortex, the region that controls finger movements, suggesting they were more preoccupied with hitting the correct notes, she said.

Scheler, a former violinist with the Nuremberg Philharmonic Orchestra, said the findings suggested that professionals have "liberated" their minds from worrying about hitting the right notes. As a result, they are able to listen, judge and control their play, Scheler said.

"Presumably, this enhances the musical performance," she said.



In a second experiment, the violinists were asked to imagine playing the concerto without moving their fingers. Brain scans showed again that the professionals were hearing the music in their heads.

Zatorre, who has studied the brain's response to music for two decades, said it was the first time anyone had studied music and its relationship to motor control and imagery.

© 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ...oops!

[Dawn]

Wow, I always thought it was drugs.

[Mazer]

This reminds me of an interestng program I got by email a while ago. It was a multiple choice test. An image or word is given for each question and you're supposed to pick which of the three answers most closely resembles the given word or picture. After about 25 questions it tells you whether you are more a right or left brainer and it also tells you whether you're more of a visual or aural thinker. When I first took it it told me that I was perfectly balanced on both, 50/50 left or right, 50/50 visual or aural, which it said is pretty rare. I wish I still had the program because it said that your score can change with time. But I thought it made a lot of sense and it seems to have something to do with this article.

However they make it sound like manual dexterity and aural cognizance are opposites. It seems to me that a good musician needs both. So what they should do is make their test subjects listen to different sounds or songs and watch a corresponding visualization at the same time and see how they respond.

[greedy_lars]

Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
[img]Neuroscientists, using brain-scanning MRI machines to peer inside the minds of professional German violinists, found they could hear the music simply by thinking about it, a skill amateurs in the study were unable to match.

is that a special ability? i must be special, i remember when i was in high school and i listened to Pink Floyd The Wall so many times in a row, for days and days, got to be i heard it in the shower, in school, in my sleep. heard it all the time. that was special.

[eclectica]

http://www.napsterites.org/forum/sho...=&threadid=321

http://www.napsterites.org/forum/sho...=&threadid=425

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Interesting test. Perhaps the very test Mazer mentioned (?)

A direct link:

http://www.dse.nl/puzzle/brain_tests/brain.zip

My score:
auditory 21.4%
left brain 60%
right brain 40%
visual 78.6%

How ya been Mr. E.?

[Mazer]

Yep, that's the one. And as I expected my learning patterns have changed since I last took the test. 62% left brain, 59% visual, it's drastically different than before. I'll take it again in two weeks to see how it changes.

[Jader]

Interesting test...

Lt brain: 45%
Rt brain: 55%
Aud: 52.9%
Vis: 47.1%

Those Windows 3.1-era buttons freaked me out...