Musicians’ Brains More Connected than Nonmusicians’

The brains of musicians have been found to have stronger structural and functional connections compared to those of non-musicians, regardless of innate pitch ability, according to research published today in the Journal of Neuroscience.

In the biggest sample to date, a team compared the brains of professional musicians, some with absolute pitch (the ability to identify a tone without a reference a skill a minority of musicians including Mozart and Michael Jackson possess) and some without, to non-musicians. To the team's surprise, there were no strong differences between the brains of musicians with and without absolute pitch ability; instead absolute pitch may shape the brain in more subtle ways.

Compared to non-musicians, both types of musicians had stronger functional connectivity—the synchronized activity of brain regions—in the auditory regions of both brain hemispheres. Musicians also had stronger white matter connections between auditory regions and lobes involved in various types of high-level processing. Musicians that began their training at a younger age had stronger structural connections than musicians with a later start.

These results demonstrate how experience shapes the brain, especially early in life, and how enhanced musical skills are represented in our brain.