Practice Makes Perfect, But Start Early

Anyone who has lived next door to a fledgling rock band has probably pondered the role of practice in improving musical ability.

Although logic suggests that great musicians are born, not made, evidence from a study published in the October 13 issue of Science magazine indicates that practice, especially from a young age, can literally alter the brain in various ways that tend to improve string playersí abilities to handle their instruments. The evidence was obtained by a technique called magnetic source imaging, which detects the weak magnetic fields produced by the electrical currents that are the essence of nerve transmission.

"Our studies indicate that manual skill, dexterity and execution are a matter of practice," says Thomas Elbert.

Elbert, along with Brigitte Rockstroh in the department of psychology at the University of Konstanz in Konstanz, Germany; Christo Pantev and Christian Wienbruch of the biomagnetism center at the University of Munster in Munster, Germany; and Edward Taub, of the department of psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, studied changes in the amount of cerebral cortex devoted to the fingers of the left hand in musicians and nonmusicians.

Participants in the study included nine string musicians (six violinists, two cellists and one guitarist) plus a control group consisting of six nonmusicians. The volunteers were between the ages of 21 and 27 and righthanded. The musicians, who had been playing their instruments for an average of 11.7 years, kept a daily diary of practice time for a week prior to the brain measurement and estimated the number of hours they had practiced over the previous month and year.

The hypothesis: Because the musicians repeatedly and intensely stimulate the fingers of the left hand, particularly the first and fifth fingers, the brain areas representing these digits should prove to be somewhat larger than those of nonmusicians.

Using magnetic source imaging, the researchers observed the participantsí cerebral cortices after applying pressure to the first and then the fifth fingers of the left hand. The magnetic readings were taken from several positions during the stimulation and, along with brainwave (EEG) readings, were superimposed on three-dimensional anatomical images obtained from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The approach places physiology within the context of anatomy.

"The resulting cortical map, though similar to positron-emission tomographs [PET] in its appearance, has the unique advantage of not displaying a slowly changing cerebral blood flow, but of imaging the electric neuronal activation alternating within fractions of a second. Static activity, averaged across minutes in PET, is replaced by a moving image, allowing the detection of the functional sequence in patterns of neural-mass activation," says Elbert.

The results are good news to rockstar wannabesñthe cerebral cortices in the string players indeed differed from those who do not play stringed instruments. Specifically, the places in the cortex devoted to the first and fifth fingers were enlarged and shifted toward the palm in musicians compared to nonmusicians. Plus, the intensity of the magnetic response among these cortical nerve cells was increased among the musicians.

As predicted, these differences were noted only for the left hand, which bears the brunt of movement while a person plays a stringed instrument. The right hand, holding the bow, receives far less stimulation. The duration and frequency of current practicing did not correlate to the extent of brain representation, but length of time as a musician did.

An alternate explanation of the results takes a chicken-and-egg approach: Perhaps people born with larger portions of the cortex devoted to the fingers that are important in playing stringed instruments are more likely to stick with music than are people not so innately endowed. Elbert thinks not.

"We tend to believe that musical training alters the functional organization of the brain. It is possible that children with a genetically determined large representation of the left-hand digits make superior string players and therefore are more likely to continue with musical training once they have begun. However, research on animals suggests use-dependent enlargements of portions of the somatosensory maps similar to those in our study," says Elbert.

The ability of the brain to accommodate greater use of fingers on one hand is relatedñthough in an opposite wayñto the phenomenon of phantom-limb pain. This is pain that a person feels to be emanating from the area where an amputated limb would normally be. What happens is that the part of the brain formerly corresponding to the amputated limb becomes "assigned" to neighboring tissue, so the pain feels as if it comes from the region of the missing body part. Experiments in owl monkeys confirms the phantom-limb phenomenon. It has been found that if a finger is amputated, the cortical region representing that finger can become activated by stimulating a neighboring finger.

The observations in the musicians is opposite that of phantom-limb pain in that repeated and intense stimulation of a body part increases the area of cortex devoted to it. Visually impaired people who use Braille have similar cortical reorganizationñthe portion of the cortex corresponding to the fingers grows. Reproportioning the roles of different regions of the highly sensitive cerebral cortex seems to be the bodyís way of accomplishing two things at once: conserving brain circuitry and optimizing its use.

Elbert plans to conduct another study of musicians looking at larger areas of the brain and will be part of a collaboration of physicists, biologists, neurologists and psychologists at the University of Konstanz. The group, according to Elbert, has "the common goal of enhancing the basic knowledge of brain functioning on the macroscopic level. We hope to uncover some of the mysteries of psychopathologic deviances, such as schizophrenia."

In the meantime, keep hassling your kids to practice that guitar or piano. The scales of today could be the brain allocations of tomorrow.

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