Classical music training also may enlarge parts of the brain, researchers said Sunday at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. Scientists have long wanted to know how the brain responds to sound and rhythm, how musical studies affect brain wiring and how the brains of the musically talented differ from those of the nonmusical.
Music is biologically part of human life, as music is artistically a part of human life.
Dr. Gottfried Schlaug of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston reported that the cerebellum is larger in classically trained male musicians than in men who don't play a musical instrument. They found a 5 percent difference in the volume of the cerebellum. Finding evidence like this is sort of remarkable. Musicians are not just born with these differences. There were no similar findings in women, though only a small number were studied.