Benefits of MUsiC for tHe BrAin
While it is clear that the power of music reflects its ability to activate the emotional and reward networks of the brain, its influence extends beyond this through its capacity to integrate multiple brain systems in the unified act of music making. This integrative role may endow music with unique benefits not inherent in other activities, underscoring its evolutionary significance. There are now more than 100 neuro imaging studies showing that music activates multiple brain networks during music listening, responding and performance. As a result, when we compare musicians and nonmusicians there are substantial differences in size, shape, density, connectivity, and functional activity that occur extensively throughout the musician's brain. It is not surprising then, that music has been dubbed the 'food of neuroscience' and provides a powerful model of how the brain can change in response to the environment. This discussion examines some of the core principles of brain plasticity derived from cognitive neuroscience, and the way in which music behaviour exemplifies these. It also considers how the brain can change in response to music and the broad range of cognitive processes and behaviours this may affect. Powerful amongst these is the ability of music to prime the brain for future learning, while more broadly promoting our individual and social wellbeing. sArAH J. WiLson Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne Associate Professor Sarah Wilson is a Reader in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, and an Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Melbourne Medical School at the University of Melbourne. She also holds the positions of Director of Neuropsychological Research at the Melbourne Brain Centre (Austin) and Director of Music, Mind and Wellbeing in the Melbourne Neuroscience Institute. Her work epitomises the combined roles of a behavioural neuroscientist and clinical neuropsychologist through the study of brain behaviour relationships in both healthy and neurological populations. She has a large, international research program that supports a productive team of researchers integrated across these fields. She has established a hospital based rehabilitation service for epilepsy patients and their families, and, more recently, a community based psychosocial clinic for patients with neurological and psychogenic disorders. Sarah is recognised for pioneering music neuroscience and music neuro imaging research in Australia, as well as characterising a new clinical syndrome after the successful treatment of chronic disease. She has significant expertise in the cognitive and psychosocial assessment of brain injured and healthy individuals using behavioural and neuro imaging techniques, with a view to improving psychological treatments for cognitive, psychosocial and emotional disorders. Since the commencement of her career she has been awarded continual nationally competitive funding (totalling approximately $6 million) to support her work and that of her team, and has supervised 78 graduate students and four post doctoral fellows. She has 90 peerreviewed scientific publications, which have received more than 1400 citations to date. She is currently an tHe Benefits of MUsiC for tHe BrAin 141 tHe Benefits of MUsiC for tHe BrAin MUsiC MAKing integrAtes MULtiPLe BrAin sYsteMs Playing, listening to and creating music involves a tantalizing mix of practically every human cognitive function. (Zatorre, 2005, p. 312) Music occurs in every human society and forms part of our basic human design. In a paper entitled 'Music, the food of neuroscience? Robert Zatorre proposed that music research is beginning to illuminate the complex relation between cognitive perceptual systems that analyse and represent the outside world, and evolutionarily ancient neural systems involved in assessing the value of a stimulus relative to survival and deciding what action to take. (2005, p. 315) This quote alludes to an emerging idea that music, as an art form, provides entry to an experience in which the many and varied functions of our mind can become integrated through the unified act of music making. This act is underscored by activation of the evolutionarily ancient reward system of the brain (the dopaminergic mesocorticolimbic system) that has a critical role in mediating arousal and attention, emotion, motivation, learning, memory and decision making. Both within an individual and between individuals, the concurrent activation of these multiple brain systems is presumably synchronised by the structure and temporal flow of music. This experience may underpin the personal and social power often ascribed to music, anecdotally described as experiences of transcendence or 'flow' It also points to the adaptive and evolutionary significance of music, in terms of its multiple benefits for human learning and development. As a complex task, music making provides a wealth of opportunities to study brain structure and function across multiple information processing systems, using both bottom up and top down approaches. Additionally, it allows investigation of isolable components or networks in either the intact or damaged brain in the context of specific parameters that may shape these networks. These include developmental factors fundamental to learning, such as the age when music training begins, or the extent of training to promote expertise. At present, our understanding of the multiple systems involved in listening to, responding to and performing music is based on the findings of more than 100 neuro imaging studies that have been conducted with musicians and nonmusicians (see Merrett Wilson, 2011, for a detailed review) as well as behavioural and neuropsychological studies dating back more than 100 years (for example, see Stewart, von Kriegstein, Warren Griffiths, 2006) Broadly, these findings indicate that music making draws on a range of highly developed and well integrated sensory, perceptual and motor skills, as well as emotions, memory, and higher order cognitive and attentional functions (see Table 1) The motivation to engage in this complex state is driven by the reward system of the brain that activates in response to both the anticipation of and the experience of pleasure (Salimpoor, Benovoy, Larcher, Dagher Zatorre, 2011) When combined with enhanced imitation or synchronisation with others (Spilka, Steele Penhune, 2010) this may promote emotional sensitivity, empathy and social cognition (Hallam, 2010) The well established neuroscience and behavioural literature surrounding music making offers a strong platform from which to explore its many and varied reported benefits. Stated simply, this platform is based on the observation that music makes connections at multiple levels, including the following: the level of the brain, in terms of its structure and function the level of the mind, for transfer of cognitive skills that are shared or similar at a personal level, in terms of integrating our thinking and emotions and regulating our wellbeing at a social level, for building social cohesion. ReseaRch confeRence 2013 142 These connections have been shown to translate to academic benefits, including improved literacy, numeracy, spatial abilities, executive functioning and intelligence, as well as greater school attendance and participation. They also extend to psychological benefits for self confidence and self discipline, and social benefits for teamwork and social skills (Hallam, 2010; Rickard McFerrin, 2011) Table 1 Information processing systems engaged by music making Highly developed sensory processing Multi modal: auditory, visual, tactile, kinesthetic Auditory perceptual processing Auditory recognition, finegrained pitch perception, auditory streaming and syntactic