(Extracted from 《SCIENCE》VOL. 282, NO. 5393) Music can lift the spirit and reshape the brain. Two studies previously presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Neuroscience in Los Angeles showed surprising effects of music on the cerebellum, while also revealing interesting new functions for this basic brain structure.
The cerebellum controls the balance and muscle coordination of all vertebrates. But when neuroscientists Lawrence Parsons and Peter Fox at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio performed PET scans of the brains of eight conductors while listening to Bach's hymn, they found that the cerebellum also participated in explaining rhythm. When the rhythm changes to a different level from the total score, the conductors' cerebellar blood flow surges, indicating unexpected sensory and non motor functions in the area.
The music ear of the cerebellum goes beyond that. According to research by neuroscientist Gottfried Schlaug of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, it also responds to music training. To test whether playing musical instruments for many years would alter the brain, Schlaug and his colleagues compared the cerebellar volumes of 90 musicians and non musicians. They found that the cerebellum of male musicians was 5% larger than that of male non musicians, indicating that years of precisefinger movements stimulated additional nerve growth. The processing of music seems to be much more dispersed and complex than people would expect from simple anatomy, "said auditory physiologist Hubert Dins of the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany.
Music is also a supplement to another region ofthe brain. A study conducted by scientists from the Chinese University of HongKong in the journal Nature on 60 female college students found that those who learned music from a young age memorized "significantly more" than those who had not received music training after reading a series of words. They said that this is consistent with early research, which showed that in people who understand music, the temporal plane of the brain region related to language is enlarged.