By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and UCSF, and science writer for Lumos Labs.
Research just published in the journal Brain and Cognition suggests that musical training can lead to more creative thinking and more symmetrical brain activity. The investigators, based out of Vanderbilt University in Nashville Tennessee, ran two experiments both comparing 20 musicians (with a minimum of 8 years of musical experience) with 20 non-musicians.
The first looked at potential differences in creative abilities by asking participants to come up with as many novel uses of common household items as possible, followed by their completing a word association task.
The second study monitored brain blood flow via near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) while participants again generated as many novel uses of everyday objects as possible.
The data indicated that:
- On average the musicians were able to generate about 13 more examples of how to use common objects than non-musicians.
- The musicians performed better on the word association task, producing an average of approximately 9 more correct responses than their non-musical counter parts.
- Overall, during the creative tasks, musicians showed more symmetrical brain blood flow between the hemispheres than the non-musicians.
Although it is always possible that creative people tend to be more drawn to the world of music than non-creative people, the authors suggest that the results might be due to the ability of certain aspects of music training, such as improvisation and song creation, to enhance cognitive and neural mechanisms of the creative process.
References:
Gibson, C., Folley, B. S., & Park, S. (2008). Enhanced divergent thinking and creativity in musicians: A behavioral and near-infrared spectroscopy study. Brain and Cognition.
4 Comments
An entertaining showdown could be between people that for example speak 5 languages regularly and people that use 5 instruments regularly. Spoken languages seem on average a more advanced and complex form of communicating yet perhaps slower and not usually involving as much multitasking. So processing speed and multitasking might not get as good a workout with languages.
Teaching then different levels of creative and synthesising genius are generally the top levels of development of most skills. So matching the skill levels might be an exact test for differences e.g. music teachers versus language teachers.
Another idea is that there is a passive stimulating exercising effect to music. One day when I had to clear the scotch thistles I got the biggest 50% increase in the processing speed records when I walked in looking like a pincushion with spikey cobblers pegs everywhere. Such techniues might add to things like fast deep breaths and jumping about to rev the nervous system up to higher speeds.
Was there any correlation as to how many of the musicians played wind instruments?
I’m just thinking that since wind players are in the habit of performing complicated tasks while making their breath last as long as possible that they may well have more developed lungs and circulation geared towards making sure the brain gets plenty of oxygen.
That said, I am not a doctor, I’m just a rather bad flute player.
The findings should be of no surpise in this study of creativity. But - I’d like to see a study on LANGUAGE, and whether music enhances language development. I play and facilitate drum circles and have noticed a new ability to understand foreign language, others agree. Music is a “mental exercise.” Before a person goes to golf, do tennis, baseball, dance, etc., do they not prep the skill needed for that activity.
WHY is it that in 2009 - we still do little to prep our brains prior to key mental activities and challenges? I see a few rx drugs are being used. There’s a lot more we can do here, beyond rx drugs. I really like drum progressions, esp some big bass to get you going.
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