Musicians develop 'ear' through experience, not genetic disposition
Traveler Staff
Issue date: 2/27/08 Section: News
Practice, training and experience develop a musician's ear and abilities, not genetic disposition, a UA professor concluded.
Elizabeth Margulis, UA assistant professor of music, collaborated with Patrick C. M. Wong and colleagues from Northwestern University in using functional MRI to examine the effect of experience with a type of music on listeners' neural responses to the music, according to a press release.
Functional MRI is based on the increase in blood flow to the local vasculature - the arrangement of blood vessels - that accompanies neural activity in the brain, according to the Columbia University functional MRI Web site.
Trained musicians had more extensive and complex neural responses to music played on their instrument of expertise than on another instrument, the researchers reported in an issue of "Human Brain Mapping."
Margulis and her colleagues took highly trained classical flautist and violinist, and listened to them play two Bach partitas, a single instrumental music piece, according to the press release. One partita used the flute and the other the violin.
The fMRI scanned and recorded brain activity while the musicians listened to short excerpts from each partita. They listened to familiar classical music played by their instrument of expertise and by another instrument.
"The difference between the two groups should be minimal," Margulis said in the press release. "Both have a lot of experience with classical music - listening, playing and evaluating."
Other studies have contrasted the brain responses of musicians with those of nonmusicians, but these studies leave open the possibility of genetic predisposition as an explanation for the differences, according to the press release.
"By contrasting two instrumentalist subgroups, we make the 'genetic predisposition' explanation less likely and strengthen the case for training," Margulis said in the press release.
Musicians showed significantly different responses to different instruments, the study concluded. When violinists listened to the violin and flutists listened to the flute, they engaged many more areas of the brain related to sense of self, motor control and suppression of unwanted movements.
Elizabeth Margulis, UA assistant professor of music, collaborated with Patrick C. M. Wong and colleagues from Northwestern University in using functional MRI to examine the effect of experience with a type of music on listeners' neural responses to the music, according to a press release.
Functional MRI is based on the increase in blood flow to the local vasculature - the arrangement of blood vessels - that accompanies neural activity in the brain, according to the Columbia University functional MRI Web site.
Trained musicians had more extensive and complex neural responses to music played on their instrument of expertise than on another instrument, the researchers reported in an issue of "Human Brain Mapping."
Margulis and her colleagues took highly trained classical flautist and violinist, and listened to them play two Bach partitas, a single instrumental music piece, according to the press release. One partita used the flute and the other the violin.
The fMRI scanned and recorded brain activity while the musicians listened to short excerpts from each partita. They listened to familiar classical music played by their instrument of expertise and by another instrument.
"The difference between the two groups should be minimal," Margulis said in the press release. "Both have a lot of experience with classical music - listening, playing and evaluating."
Other studies have contrasted the brain responses of musicians with those of nonmusicians, but these studies leave open the possibility of genetic predisposition as an explanation for the differences, according to the press release.
"By contrasting two instrumentalist subgroups, we make the 'genetic predisposition' explanation less likely and strengthen the case for training," Margulis said in the press release.
Musicians showed significantly different responses to different instruments, the study concluded. When violinists listened to the violin and flutists listened to the flute, they engaged many more areas of the brain related to sense of self, motor control and suppression of unwanted movements.
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