Musical Training Equals Brain Health

Research 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 from these experiments 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 also 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 possible that creative people tend to be drawn to the world of music more 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.