Advanced brain activity in artists and musicians

Many people who are not creative believe that trained artists and musicians think differently from them and they are right. Psychologists have discovered that professionally trained musicians use both the left and the right sides of their brain more than the average person.

right left These people are talented in creative areas like art and music. These people are strong in academic areas such as reading, maths and logic.

Non-musicians are often impressed at how pianists, for example, can read two lines of music, and play the top line with the right hand and the bottom line with the left. Violin players, too, can simultaneously perform one action with the hand holding the bow and another, different action with the hand on the strings. Long hours of practice give musicians excellent coordination and skills that non-musicians don’t have.

Reading the music and translating the notes into hand movements uses the left hemisphere, but performing music is associated with right hemisphere activity.

The same is true of visual artist, who translate ideas and emotions into images by a process that uses both sides of the brain.

Researches wanted to see how creative people solved problems by thinking ‘outside the box’. To compare the thinking processes of musicians and non-musical people, a group of students were shown some everyday objects and asked to invent new uses for them. They were then given a word test the musicians showed more advanced language skills in word test, and they also had more original ideas for alternative uses for the objects.

What the research does not prove is whether musical skill is something that you are born with, or whether it can be learnt. A child who starts to play a musical instrument at a very early age and continues playing for many years may be changing his or her brain activity by doing so. This suggests that the differences in a creative brain are caused as much by training as by genetics.