Musicians have bigger brains? The short answer is Yes. In recent years, due in large part to advances in functional brain imaging a new wave of research has revealed how sound shapes the brain. Let me touch on just a few of the findings.

Studies have shown that symphony orchestra musicians’ exhibit larger volumes of gray matter (neural cell bodies, dendrites and axons), in Broca’s area depending on how many years they have been playing an instrument.  Broca’s area is believed to contribute to speech production and verbal working memory. Findings indicate that, while the region’s size typically decreases as people age, musicians continue to average fifteen percent more gray matter here even well into their sixties.

Musicians Continue to Average Fifteen Percent

More Gray Matter Here Even Well Into Their Sixties

There was an interesting study published in The Journal of Neuroscience. Research conducted by Gottfried Schlaug at Harvard Medical School found structural differences in brain structures between musicians and non-musicians that may support those structural changes may be in response to training induced plasticity in the sensory-motor region.

A later study in The Neuroscientist suggests the potential for music making as an interactive treatment or intervention for neurological and developmental disorders, as well as those associated with normal aging.  A small area known as Heschl’s gyrus, part of the auditory cortex was found to have 130% more gray matter in professional musicians compared to non-musicians. Even among amateur musicians this region was measurably larger. Recently Cerebral Cortex published a study by German researchers that found professional singers have increased functional activation in the primary somatosensory cortex, basal ganglia, thalamus and the cerebellum.

The Brain Has a Remarkable Capacity

to Change in Response to the Environment

The brain has a remarkable capacity to change in response to the environment. And music playing and listening can bring about structural and behavioral changes. Numerous studies have established training-induced structural changes occur in the healthy adult human brain. Recently researchers have started investigating the role of musical training in early childhood. One study published in The Journal of Neuroscience demonstrates structural changes after only 15 months of musical training in early childhood, which were correlated with improvements in musically relevant motor and auditory skills.

Making Music is Good for Our Soul

and We Now Know it Can Transform Our Brain

The body of evidence is encouraging… So sing and play musical instruments. Making music is good for our soul and we now know it can transform our brain. We recently brought a beautiful grand piano into our home and will enjoy growing our brains together as a family as we tickle the ivory.  I wish we could take before and after fMRIs as case studies!

More information about this article and the effect that music and sound have on our brain can be found by visiting Healing At The Speed Of Sound.Similar Posts:

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Only changing one letter at a time, you must find three words that take you from “CART” to “BAKE”. I’ve provided one solution, but you may find a different way.

Please leave your answers in the comments below. I’d love to see them!

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I am wired to move, and move when I am wired. In Yoda-speak: a kinesthetic learner I am. My brain wants me to move; needs me to move. Whoever is at the controls, or is in control, feels better when I am moving.

Picture a tiny animatronic human, like one of the creatures in Men In Black. There is a scene in that movie that fits my image perfectly. The alien on the outside clearly looks human, but the creature opens his chest or gets its head blown off (I forget which) and there is a little man inside working the controls like a biomechanical puppeteer.

I am a Physical Education and Wellness teacher, so my little ‘inner man’ is usually eager to go. Recently I had an important interview, for a teaching position in another school district, and I took the day off to get in touch with my ‘Inner Man’.

I went to the Gym.

There is bike at Cardinal Fitness, an exercise bike that has a virtual rider who turns when I move the handlebars. I did 10 miles and about 800 calories. Maybe 40 minutes on the bike. I zipped home and then attacked my garden, working my body to a serious sweat for maybe the next four hours. More oxygen to my brain; my brain was happy; it got its oxygen fix and then some. My brain craved exercise and told me, in its Inner Man way, that it wanted lots and lots of oxygenated blood, which it basically feeds on.

To quote John Ratey, M.D., author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, “Exercise is miracle grow to the brain.”

Let’s get back to my garden. I worked the asphalt out of my hind-end and quit at a sensible time. The interview was at 5:00 pm at an elementary school across town. It was time to quit tilling and digging my garden for planting.

I could have had a nap but held off.

Out of the shower I was calm, thinking about the questions the Principal might ask me. I was calm because the exercise I got earlier calmed me down, equaled both sides of the mysterious equation of mind and body. I worked out, did big things with my arms and legs and core. I sweat, profusely, when I was digging up sod with the spade and hauling it in the wheel barrow.

I sat down at my desk to work on this article, sketching things out and jotting things down. I felt good, relaxed, calm, and not yet sore from the exertion. My hands were a little shaky from the jarring and jolting of digging holes for the small fence posts I put into the hard Indiana ground.

My garden will soon have plants inside it that I will carefully tend so that good things grow, especially cucumbers and tomatoes. My garden was a needed physical distraction. As I worked in it I allowed my mind to roam free to nowhere. I got lost in the hard work, but the hard work was not lost on me.

It is a little after 4:00 pm.

I am downstairs, at my desk, eyes closed, breathing deeply. I hear my wife come home from school, where she also teaches physical education, only at a Catholic school on the northeast side of Indianapolis. Breathe in and out. I felt wonderfully relaxed. Calm. Focused. Alert.

I’ll leave at about 4:18, give myself plenty of time in case something happens and my time goes somewhere else. I went upstairs, said hello, and began to get dressed. I say goodbye to my wife and sons.

Driving to the school I got caught in traffic, a seemingly endless line of cars going to or coming from somewhere, anywhere, I didn’t care.

4:22. Traffic can be a huge stressor but I was as calm as the cucumbers I’d be seeing in three weeks or so.

4:32. Haven’t moved in ten minutes. Traffic got stupid and I got a little stressed and panicky – but my brain, still faintly glowing from all that rich oxygen it got earlier – handled it in stride.

4:38. Open the window. Turn on the radio. We just moved twenty feet, then fifty, then a hundred. Breathe in and out, in and out, out and in, out and in.

4:49. I got to the school with ten minutes to spare. I felt good, really, really good. The exercise. My brain was rewarding me, and would reward me again in fifteen minutes, when I would be asked a question that was a curve ball. I could never hit a curve ball.

I am still very calm and focused and unstressed. My brain is still buzzing from the intoxicating effects of the oxygenated blood. I sat next to the Vice-Principal and stared the Principal directly in one eye like Dad used to tell me to do.

My last interview, I was both late and stressed, and I definitely did not work out before; I most likely took a nap that I did not need and drank one too many Cokes.

I answered the Principal’s questions and gave calm, intelligent, well-thought answers. My alert mass of tissue, much of it composed of water, sitting squarely (well, sort of oblong-ly) inside my skull took that last curve-ball question and figured out how to hit it out of the park.

I had a successful interview and answered all questions well, succinctly, passionately, and smartly. There was a writing exercise and I attacked it like a big predator hunting easy prey. Exercise, especially before an important event like a job interview, makes the brain function at a much more efficient level. Specifically, cardio-respiratory exercise, like biking 10 miles at about a mile every 4 minutes, brings the brain an enormous amount of oxygen. It freely distributes it to a finger here and a toe there and the tip of the nose and a part of the body that supports you whenever you sit.

20% stays, though. 20% stays and that says a lot. Aerobic exercise allows us to hit curve balls when our ordinary, un-oxygenated selves believe and perceive that we can’t hit them.

So the next time you have something big on your radar screen, find time to work out, and hard. Your brain will love you for it and will step up to the plate. Your hands might shake a little and your buttocks and hamstrings might be a little sore, but whatever lies on your radar screen will be in good shape. You’ll handle it. Your brain will handle it, if you think to take care of it and give it the gift of exercise.

Ted Scheck, a Physical Education and Wellness Teacher, is a husband, a
father and an exercise advocate. When he’s not hitting the bike at the
gym, you can usually find him in his garden – picking the perfect tomato.

Photo (c)istockphoto/vm

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In 2006 Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, of Columbia University Medical Center, led a team of researchers who found that elderly New Yorkers who ate a diet closely aligned with the Mediterranean diet have a 40% lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers followed 2,258 cognitively healthy participants aged 65 or older. Those eating diets rich in leafy green vegetables, nuts, fish, cereals and fruits found themselves in this lowered risk group.

Scarmeas then took a subset of the participants, about 700, and continued to follow their eating habits. Those staying close to this Mediterranean way of eating were 36% less likely to have brain damage from brain infarcts, a type of stroke that occurs when the blood flow is either slowed or blocked by clotting.

A third finding of the study showed participants who exercised, as well as followed the diet, had a 61-67% lower risk of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Key Components of the Mediterranean Diet:

• Getting plenty of exercise and eating your meals with family and friends
• Eating a generous amount of fruits and vegetables
• Consuming healthy fats such as olive oil and canola oil
• Using herbs and spices instead of salt to flavor foods
• Eating small portions of nuts
• Drinking red wine, in moderation, for some
• Consuming very little red meat
• Eating fish or shellfish at least twice a week

Key Components Source: The Mayo Clinic

The Mediterranean diet has previously been linked to better heart health, as well as lower cancer rates.

Below you’ll find further resources on this diet.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mediterranean-diet/CL00011

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/08/mediterranean.diet.brain/index.html

http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20090811/mediterranean-diet-plus-exercise-cuts-alzheimers-risk

Photo ©istockphoto/webphotographeer

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• What factors are associated with the reduction of risk of Alzheimer’s disease?
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• What are the therapeutic and adverse effects of interventions to improve or maintain cognitive ability or function? Are there differences in outcomes among identifiable subgroups?
• What are the relationships between the factors that affect Alzheimer’s disease and the factors that affect cognitive decline?
• If recommendations for interventions cannot be made currently, what studies need to be done that could provide the quality and strength of evidence necessary to make such recommendations to individuals?

The conference will take place in Bethesda, Maryland, and is open to the public. You can view the full schedule of events and presenters here.

If you won’t be in the Maryland area at the time of the event, you can register to attend via the web by registering here.

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As I sat down on the couch after devouring a sugar cookie for dessert, my uncle handed me one of those big legal note pads. On it was a brain teaser that a friend had sent him via email. In my sugared brain fog, I worked through it and thought I would share it with you.

Look at the following series of numbers and determine which number goes in place of the question mark.

2,3,10

3,4,21

4,5,36

5,6,55

6,7, ?

You can post your answers in the comments below, and then check the solution to see if you were correct.

If you enjoy these teasers, please share them with your friends and family by clicking the Blue Share Buttons below. I appreciate your support!

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The sites are in no particular order, and many thanks go out to the group for being active members of the Brain Training 101 community.

Brain Injury Survival Kit

Cheryle Sullivan, MD runs this informative and welcoming site on Traumatic Brain Injury.

“If you or someone you know or love has had a Traumatic Brain Injury then you know that the road that they will travel will be very much like a journey full of ups and downs as well as highs and lows. This website is dedicated to those who have and do live with Brain Injuries every day, their families, supporters and caregivers.”

Brain Food Factory

Ric Allport heads up this monthly newsletter full of trivia and puzzles.

“We are encouraging people to actively feed their brains with interesting fun things to do to keep those brain cells working well. We like to think of it as food for the brain.”

The Best Brain

Debbie Hampton, a brain injury survivor, shares her journey of recovery.

“We have much more power to recover from a brain injury, improve our brain’s functioning, and to create our own reality with our brain than we ever thought possible. Here I will tell you how I did so and encourage you to do the same.”

Your Inner Wizard

Tom Justin is the creator of this personal problem solving center.

“The power of creativity and successful living are within this source. What you will find here is proof, and how to use Your Inner Wizard daily. But only if you’re willing to be an open-minded skeptic.”

MindMatters

Terry South is the voice behind this evolving startup.

It’s nice design is easy on the eyes and is in need of just a bit of direction. Maintaining a blog is no easy task, and I applaud Terry for stepping up to the challenge.

Do you have a brain focused blog or website? Subscribe to our free newsletter so that you can be featured in future blog posts!

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With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, many of us are walking around with love (or chocolate) on the brain. In celebration of the sugary sweet holiday, I’ve gathered some love inspired articles and videos I think you’ll enjoy.

What Happens To Your Brain When You Fall In Love?
The chemical steps that lead to love.

Just Thinking Of A Loved One Can Reduce Physical Pain
Next time you are in pain, think of a loved one – or at least look at a photo of them.

Why You Blush
Dutch psychologists find that the presence (or absence) of blushing determines whether your embarrassing blunder will be forgiven.

The Brain In Love – Why We Crave Love So Much

Helen Fisher and her research team took MRIs of people in love — and people who had just been dumped — to figure out why we crave love.

Do I Love My Wife? An Investigative Report
A.J. Jacobs volunteers to go into an fMRI machine so researchers can “see” how he truly feels about his wife.

Here’s a short video that illustrates the fMRI test above.

How Your Brain Handles Love And Pain
Just knowing your loved one is in pain activates a specific area of your brain and leads to empathy.

Can You Stay Madly In Love With Your Spouse?
Love just might leave a strong impression on your brain, as well as your heart, suggest researchers from Stony Brook University.

And for those of you who aren’t so fond of the big red day, no worries. Monday will be here soon enough, and I’ll cease with the mushy stuff.    ;-)

image ©istockphoto/Kativ

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