Musicians Have Bigger Brains

US But Is It The Chicken Or The Egg? 15/10/10

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Here's some good news - researchers have found that musicians have bigger brains:

A study by Heidelberg University's Schneider found that people with musical experience had larger amounts of grey matter in the region called the? Heschl's gyrus.

The structure contained 536 to 983 cubic mm of grey matter in professional musicians and 172 to 450 cubic mm in non-musicians. This does not mean that all musicians have bigger brains than everyone else, just that music leads to an increase in size in this area.

However, other things being equal, it does mean that practising music will increase the size of a person's brain.

What do you think? Does playing music make you smarter - or are people with certain types of brain anatomy just more likely to be good at music?

via Julian Treasure

Image by by EUSKALANATO

James Lewin
Twitter @podcasting_news