Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Music and Your Neural Net

Some studies at UCLA a few years ago show that formally trained musicians listen mostly from their left brains while untrained listeners use their right brains. It would seem to me that since we all began as untrained musicians we all listened mostly from our right brain (affective). Those of us who studied formally migrated to the left brain (cognitive) as we learned to analyze what we were listening to. The bundle of nerves that connect the right and left hemishperes is 10-15% larger in trained musicians!! So... what does that say about our discipline? I would guess that we can move quite easily across our brain to solve problems with whatever hemisphere is most suited to the problem. I always figure those that migrate to the left brain and get stuck there will be university teachers and have half-baked neural nets. If you can move back to the right side with all the tools gained from the left side you might create music someone else is interested in listening to. But.... above all, this all shows that learning music will grow new and more sophisticated neural nets few other disciplines can match. Learning music may be a solution to creative thinking in all things.

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