Music and Your Brain

When I was in kindergarten my Mom signed me up for a class at the community music center called KinderMuisc. The class ran every Wednesday and was led by Ms. Thompson, who was a music teacher at one of the local elementary schools. Every week I got to try out a different instrument, and at the conclusion of the summer-long program, I got to decide which one I liked the best. I chose the drums, and my Mom signed me up for drum lessons shortly after my KinderMusic days were behind me. In retrospect, my Mom was very brave, encouraging an aspiring six-year-old drummer at the cost of peace and quiet in her own home.

My first drum lesson was at Joe's Drum Shop with a teacher named Joel. When I walked in, I was led down the stairs in the back of the store to a studio with blue foam egg-crate lining the walls. Crammed in the corner was a jet black drum set, and as soon as I laid my beady little eyes on it, I practically started to salivate. I instinctively moved closer to the black drum stool, but was halted by Joel.

"Hey pal! We're going to start out over here on the drum pad today."

Joel grabbed my shoulders and aimed my body at a pair of grey, round drum pads, that looked like glorified dinner plates.

"At the beginning of every lesson, we're going to start out on the pad. We'll work on stick control, sight reading, and rudiments. Then, at the end of the lesson, we'll switch over to the drum set. Think of the drum set as dessert."

And so it went for twelve years until I graduated high school, and even to today here at RIT where I play drums in the RIT Jazz Ensemble. Over the years various music teachers would always be citing statistics which showed that kids who were involved in music did better in school, and that practicing an instrument would lead to a better attention span.

But can merely listening to music improve your attention span? A study from the Stanford School of Medicine suggests just that. The research team used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to monitor brain activity in subjects while they listened to symphonies by an obscure composer from the eighteenth century. The focus of the study was to observe what happens in the brain of a listener in the moments leading up to, during, and after the short silences between movements of the symphony.

"The study suggests one possible adaptive evolutionary purpose of music," explains the study's co-author Jonathan Berger, PhD. Music engages the brain over a period of time, and the process of listening to music could be a way that the brain sharpens its ability to anticipate, and improves its ability to sustain attention.

If this study is accurate, you could think of classical pieces with multiple movements like exercises for your brain. The anticipation associated with the silence between movements could potentially extend your ability to pay attention in other situation.

So the next time you are in your car and searching for a radio station, tune your dial to the classical music station. It might have actual neurological benefits!

(Below is an example of an fMRI scan)