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Related Experiment Videos

Brain changes after learning to read and play music.

Lauren Stewart1, Rik Henson, Knut Kampe

  • 1Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N3AR, UK. l.stewart@ucl.ac.uk

Neuroimage
|October 7, 2003
PubMed
Summary

Learning to read music and play the keyboard activates the bilateral superior parietal cortex. This brain region facilitates the automatic translation of written music into motor actions.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Music Cognition

Background:

  • Music reading is a complex skill involving visual processing and motor execution.
  • The neural basis of acquiring music reading skills remains incompletely understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the neural changes associated with learning to read music and play the keyboard.
  • To identify brain regions involved in the automatic sensorimotor translation of musical notation.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to scan musically naive participants before and after a 15-week music training program.
  • Participants performed tasks involving playing melodies from notation and viewing irrelevant musical notation.

Main Results:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Post-training, participants showed activation in the bilateral superior parietal cortex when playing melodies from notation.
  • A subset of these superior parietal voxels were also activated when viewing musical notation, irrespective of task relevance.
  • This suggests an automatic processing component in music reading.

Conclusions:

  • Acquiring music reading skills leads to functional changes in the superior parietal cortex.
  • Music reading appears to involve an automatic sensorimotor translation of visual musical codes into motor commands.
  • The superior parietal cortex plays a crucial role in this learned skill.