From my latest YouTube video:

I want to continue discussing the importance of learning an instrument and playing music regularly. And as always, singing is definitely included!

In my last video, I used the phrase “music lights up the brain” and you’ve probably heard other people saying the same words. But what does that mean? Let’s step into the science world for a quick moment and talk about cognitive musicology.

Simply put, cognitive musicology is the study of how our brains process music. A lot of information is used by our brains to listen and/or play music and scientists in this field examine these processes.

Looking at the brain while it’s engaged in any activity let alone playing an instrument is challenging but researchers have a few tools up their sleeves. The first that most people know about is the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging or fMRI. McGill has a neat video about using fMRI on musicians that I’ll link to in the description. Considering how loud an MRI is, I can’t imagine trying to play an instrument in one but that’s just me! Positron emission tomography or PET is another technique. This one uses a radioactive tracer and person is then looked at with a CT scan. These indirect tools look for increased blood flow in specific regions of the brain which theoretically indicates that those regions are being used for information processing like playing an instrument.

Then we have the tools that measure electrical activity in regions of the brain.

Electro encephalography (EEG) does this by having the subject wearing a special cap. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is similar but looks at the magnetic fields created by the electrical activity in the brain using Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) sensors positioned in a helmet around the subject's head. These tools look at neuronal activity in specific brain regions while doing activities like what we’re talking about here and that’s - playing music.

So, after going a little crazy talking about all the fun lab toys, you probably want me to get to the point, here it is. When we read or do math, we see specific parts of the brain become active. When we simply listen to music, more areas start showing activity. But it’s when we actually play music on an instrument that all these tests…light up. Literally, we see activity all over the brain particularly in the visual, auditory, and motor cortices. After all, when we play music, our brains are simultaneously processing so many different types of information. This information is often intricate, not always related, but needs to be processed extremely fast. Think of a violinist or a guitar player playing a killer solo, written or improvised. 

So, let’s go a tiny bit deeper into this rabbit hole. 

When we play an instrument, we use fine motor skills which is one of the big differences between simply listening to music and playing it. Those fine motor skills are controlled by both hemispheres of the brain. In the left hemisphere, we activate the linguistic and mathematical parts of the brain whereas creativity and novel thinking is in the realm of the right hemisphere. 

When we use both sides like this and allow messages to get across the brain in diverse pathways, our corpus callosum, the bridge between the two hemispheres, increases in volume.

This may be why musicians are able to solve problems more effectively and creatively than non musicians especially as musicians.  Executive functioning is a category of interlinked tasks

that includes planning, strategizing, and attention to detail

and requires simultaneous analysis of both cognitive and emotional aspects and musicians often have higher levels of this executive functioning. 

And let’s not forget about memory. Musicians show enhanced memory functions such as creating, storing, and retrieving memories more quickly and efficiently. 

Okay, the neurobiology behind the benefits are far more complicated and nuanced than the pop science dive I did in this video but hopefully this surface level explanation is enough to convince you that there are actual studies highlighting the rewards of playing music.

So no more excuses - get that old guitar out of the closet and start jamming. Or go out and join your local choir. And if you don’t play anything, call your local music teacher and learn an instrument…like the ukulele!