Learning

            When referring to the development of the brain in his "Guitar Zero" book, Gary Marcus states that "the gray matter increase is a diagnostic of learning in general" meaning that there are actual detectable, physical changes that occur in the brain when we learn- for instance- to jump start a car or to parallel park (Marcus 33). This unbelievable concept of gaining brain mass was recently utilized in a study done at Lund University (here is a link to the findings: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/251361.php.)

              The study was set up so that a group of subjects with "a talent for acquiring languages" was immersed in an accelerated learning course where they were learning a particular language "from morning to night, seven days a week" for 13 months! After that period they were able to speak the language fluently! The control group of this study were students of cognitive science and medicine, meaning that they also were a group of "hard-workers" in regards to learning except that their area of study was not that of languages. Both groups obtained MRI scans before and after studying for 3 months and the results were simply inconceivable! The MRI scans of the control group showed no change in the brain structure, whereas "in the language group, certain parts of the brain had grown, including thehippocampus, responsible for learning new information, and three areas in the cerebral cortex." The study also goes on to conclude that there was a difference as to what area of the brain experienced the growth and that was dependent upon an individual and "how simple it was for an individual to learn a language." This means that one participant could have had an increase in brain growth in one area due his ability to easily comprehend the language, while another subject might have had greater difficulty with that which resulted in brain growth in a different area.

                  Gary Marcus also ponders upon the fact that "learning a language early in life clearly beats learning one late in life" (Marcus 92). It is an undisputed, yet a puzzling fact. It is also a frustrating one for those who had to learn a second language as adults or even teens (myself included.) There are numerous studies confirmatory of the fact that kids are better learners of language than adults. One of the recent ones that particularly caught my attention concludes that "when it comes to extracting complex rules from spoken language, a three-month-old outperforms adult learners" (here is a link to the article: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/250073.php.) This conclusion was based upon data from EEG that showed that babies could recognize when the syllables that were being played to them were out of place, whereas adults learners had to be "asked to explicitly look for dependencies between the syllables" in order to recognize a rule violation. As already mentioned, this study- among many others- only confirms what has been deemed as obvious- that babies are better language learners than adults. There is therefore a plethora of scientific studies and empirical suppositions that attempt to explain this fact but we still do not seem to have a definitive answer.

                              Regardless of the field of study, "new knowledge can bring a surge of dopamine one might get by ingesting crack cocaine" (Marcus 17). Therefore, even though there is a difference in the ability of children and adults to learn, it feels rewarding to both.

Bibliography:

"Babies' Ability To Detect Complex Rules In Language Outshines That Of Adults." Medical News Today. MediLexicon International, 12 Sept. 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012.< http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/250073.php>.

Glynn, Sarah. "Learning New Languages Helps The Brain Grow." Medical News Today. MediLexicon International, 11 Oct. 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/251361.php>.

Marcus, Gary F. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print.

Brain Plasticity in Adulthood

“Are musicians born or made?”

Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist at New York University, poses this question in his book about learning the guitar at age thirty-nine, “Guitar Zero”.  Conditioned to believe that he would never become musical due to his poor sense of tune, rhythm and pitch as well as a diagnosis of congenital arrhythmia, Marcus set out to see if it was too late for him to learn an instrument. While few studies regarding how adults understand music exist, Marcus made himself the subject in a case study devoted to understanding brain plasticity in adulthood.  He challenges the widely accepted idea that learning something as complex as playing the guitar must be executed in those “critical periods” of learning which at age forty he had long surpassed.

A key topic of “Guitar Zero” is brain plasticity, or the brain’s capacity to alter its structure and thus its function over time due to environmental changes.  Marcus admits that the child brain is able to rewire its neurons more subtly than the adult brain, however asserts that through a step-wise (perhaps slower) process, adults can learn complex skills (i.e. languages and in this case, musical instruments) just as extensively as children.  He states that the difficulties in learning come more from environmental interferences, such as inadequate time for practicing and less social support, rather than physiological differences in the brain.  This brain plasticity argument affirms that brain continues to develop well into adult-hood.

This theory holds steady in Daniel J. Wakin’s article for the New York Times “Reviving Musical Dreams in Middle Age”.  The article regards Cassandra Gordon, a now seventy-three year-old woman who began learning the cello eleven years prior. Like Marcus, Wakin asserts that while the process may be longer, more demanding and more frustrating, adults can reach an impressive level of efficiency in learning an instrument.

Brain plasticity is a key topic in neuroscience because it accounts for a variety of processes from learning to brain repair.  The ability of the brain to rewire its neurons and develop according to changes is largely responsible for how the environment changes a person's behavior. Gary Marcus' experiment stemmed from a love of music and a desire to produce his own, and produced results relevant to a multitude of aspects of neuroscience. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/education/in-middle-age-reviving-dreams-of-playing-music.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 

We All Need to "Just Keep Swimming"

Dendritic Spines (Credit: Yi Zuo, University of California, Santa Cruz)

We have been told our entire lives that "practice makes perfect"; that the more we work for something, the better we will become. However, a lot of the time we become discouraged because we do not see immediate results. In his book, Guitar Zero, Gary Marcus discusses the importance of practicing when trying to learn an instrument.

Marcus writes how learning to play the guitar was a long and difficult process. He explains how the "maddening irregularities" (Marcus 40) that are involved in music make it extremely difficult to learn. The brain functions much better when presented with patterns or commonalities. However, music requires skills that are involved in, "precise perceptual mastery, such as recognizing particular sounds or shapes; it may require precise coordination in time between multiple muscles; and it may require development on the part of the muscles themselves" (Marcus 43). The integration of so many different skills that are not typical for individuals causes some of the difficulties that beginner musicians face.

Facing such intimidating tasks at the same time as not seeing immediate effects is one of the greatest obstacles individuals face when learning something new. However, a recent article in Scientific American called "Spine Tuning: Finding Physical Evidence of How Practice Rewires the Brain," discusses a study from University of California, Santa Cruz that offers proof that practice, does indeed, make perfect.

Researcher Yi Zuo lead the study at the University of California by looking at the neural development as rats preformed various tasks at different levels of practice over four days. The first group of rats practiced the same task every day, while the second and third group preformed two different tasks and played with several different toys, respectively. Lastly, the fourth group of rats simply went about their days without doing any sort of practice. Zuo and her colleagues looked at the motor cortices of the rats through a two-photon microscope and discovered that the rats who practiced regularly grew significantly more clusters of dendritic spines than the other groups of rats.

Neurons receive information through their dendritic spines, which are extremely dynamic. Thus, the more one practices, the connections between neurons strengthen and cause learning to take place. The other three groups of rats did grow new spines on their neurons; however, the rats that repeatedly practiced grew more clusters. Zuo showed that the dendritic spines developed very quickly, some appearing within an hour of training. However, her study leaves us with the question: is it the number of spines or the size of spines that cause the strongest connections?

While there may not yet be an answer to this question, Marcus explains that, "Existing neural connections (synapses) must be made more efficient, new dendritic spines may be formed, and proteins must be synthesized" (Marcus 52). As this happens, an individual experiences learning, making him/her better at a particular task. In order to do this, one must repeatedly practice a task until it becomes encoded into higher levels of cognition of the brain, such as the hippocampus and the basal ganglia. Marcus writes that, "mastering time can literally take years" (Marcus 49) when it comes to music. Professional musicians reach a level where things become automatic - the movement of their fingers as they play music feels natural, developing the ability to differentiate between pitches, etc - thanks to persistent and focused practice.

Marcus explains the importance of practicing in order to excel in activities such as music while Zuo offers evidence that the brain changes as soon as one starts to practice. Many individuals may be discouraged to stop practicing just because they don't see immediate results; however Zuo helps us see that the brain is, in fact, immediately changing, showing that learning is occurring.

Maybe we should all start taking advice from our Disney friend, Dory, to not give up and "just keep swimming."

Do You Hear What I Hear?

     The ability to listen comes quite naturally for most of the human population, except in cases of hearing impairment.  Listening, for obvious reasons, has many advantages to humans from the ability to engage in communication and away to intake surroundings and information as part of awareness.The brain is constructed in such a way that even before birth babies are already taking in the sounds that surround them such as heartbeats, their mother's voice, and other bodily sensations like breathing.  During infancy, babies learn to differentiate between sounds partially in language breakdown; their neural network changes to reflect what the baby hears.  The act of listening starts early in life and begins to lay the foundation for language structures long before a child even learns to speak.  What's even more amazing then the brains ability to listen to absorb language is its ability to listen to music. 

     In Guitar Zero: The Science of Learning to be Musical, by Gary Marcus, listening is a huge part of Marcus's discussion since the ability to listen plays a key role within learning and understanding music.  Listening to music, like language, starts during infancy, and shares some of the same characteristics.  Listening to music is also not a learned skill in the same sense as learning to be musical is; learning to sing or play an instrument takes directed focus and practice, but listening comes more naturally.  Humans are all expert listeners and the ability to listen to music between musicians and non-musicians are surprisingly very similar with not a huge difference.

     Marcus' discussions about the act of listening, whether be language or music, holds much truths in terms of recent neuroscience research that is emerging.  An article posted in Daily Science, Listening to music lights up the whole brain, discusses groundbreaking fMRI research which supports much of what Marcus discussed about all the brain facilities involved in simply listening to music.  Listening to music is not merely a simple act; listening to music engages the whole brain from more technical aspects to emotion.  Maybe this is why music has such a profound effect on people... their mind is activated in a dynamic way!

     This dynamic activation of the brain most likely plays a large role in the fact non-musicians and musicians are apt to both being experts in music listening. Marcus writes about research done by Emmanuel Bigand who sought to find the differences between the two groups.  In the the end, regardless of training, "the average listener comes to know implicitly many aspects of the formal structure of music.  Untrained listeners won't necessarily be able to articulate that knowledge; professional musicians can often describe what's going on in a song with far more precision than mere listeners can (Marcus 151)."  In summary, listening can be honed in through a trained ear and declarative knowledge, but listening itself is at entry level into musicianship.  The research done through fMRI shows that music listening is encompassing which shows that trained skill is not needed for the task of listening; the brain takes on listening tasks with vigor.

     The researchers that conducted the fMRI studied in the Daily Science article (their experiment can be found here http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811911013000) "found that music listening recruits not only the auditory areas of the brain, but also employs large-scale neural networks (Listening to music 3)."  This found strong correlations of music activating motor areas of the brain and music activating the limbic system.  Music is closely related to movement, and Marcus discusses this in his book on multiple occasions; one of the most compelling aspect of movement Marcus touched on is when he attended a Dalcroze method class where learning music at a young age was brought about through movement! The fMRI research supports movement being deeply embedded with music.  Not only did Marcus touch on music's relationship to movement but also to emotion.  Parts of the limbic system are huge players in our emotional states, and it is easy to say on a personal level that music effects mood.  Marcus acknowledges that emotions and emotional intelligence play roles in music whether as a listener or a creator; music is written with emotion and achieves its purpose when the listener and feel it through his or her emotions. 

    Music listening is a gateway into the world of music and takes place as soon as hearing facilities are developed.  Marcus, as a student of music, saw how basic listening is to the world of music and further sought research to help show how powerful listening is whether one is a musician or not.  Recent research also helps to show captivating listening to music is for the brain.  Music is not simple in any way and lights up the brain in a vast network of connections from the way music makes one feel to driving beat behind it.

New Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111205081731.htm

Overcoming PTSD

We often hear of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) associated with returning war veterans and their narrow escapes from death. PTSD is then said to follow the soldiers for the rest of their lives, the war memories haunting their every step. However, these Hollywood depictions of PTSD contain much exaggerated tones regarding the disorder. The DSM-IV has a lengthy classification system of PTSD which includes having an exposure to any traumatic event which meets two of their criteria (from a total of 6) and experience of symptoms from the group of three major symptoms: intrusive recollections, avoidant and hyper-arousal symptoms. With this in mind, it is reported that 50-60% of the population of the United States will experience a traumatic event and of these people, 8% can be diagnosed to have PTSD. Of these 8%, about 66% will actually recover from the disorder.

This is much like the case of Elizabeth Ebaugh, who suffered a traumatic experience in January 1968. Upon returning to her car from a grocery store in the suburbs of Washington D.C., she was approached by a man with a large knife, who forced her into the passenger seat and took control of the car. The man rode around with Ebaugh, a 30 year old psychotherapist who tried to convince the man to free her. The man later took her to a motel and raped Ebaugh, eventually forcing her back in the car. Around 2 a.m., her aggressor stopped at a bridge, to release Ebaugh. Thinking she was free, the aggressor instead instructed her to jump off the bridge, at which point Ebaugh fainted. She regained her consciousness while falling from the bridge, handcuffed. Ebaugh eventually made it to a rock climb and received help from a stranger from which she called the police and was taken to a hospital.

Though she suffered from severe PTSD symptoms after her abduction, Ebaugh regained a grasp of her life and was able to frequent the grocery shop where she was attacked and drive across the bridge she was thrown from. Evident from her case, social support was the driving force against PTSD and many other psychological problems. Researchers have found individuals who have large PTSD symptoms have an underactive prefrontal cortex and an overactive amygdala. On the other hand, those which do not experience the PTSD symptoms for long have a much more active prefrontal cortex and increased connections between the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the hippocampus. As Gary Marcus mentions in his book, Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning, different areas of the brain are served from diverse sources. The ACC plays an important role in a stress-shrinking response and combined with interactions from the hippocampus, the mechanism of decreasing the stresses brought up from traumatic events stored by the hippocampus becomes quite clear.

Apart from a biological perspective, Marcus also delves into the nature vs. nurture dialogues. Indeed, the biological role of PTSD is evident from the brain studies conducted; however, as Ebaugh says herself, the major factor for her recovery is the social support she received. Her support network was so immense, Ebaugh comments, "For the first month, I almost had to tell people to stop coming because I was so surrounded by friends and community."

It is inconceivable that a single factor was sufficient enough for Ebaugh, or many others like her, to overcome their experiences with PTSD. The intricate network of nature and nurture has led researchers to investigate various reasons for certain resiliency many individuals have when it comes to a host of psychological disorders. I think as we move further in our knowledge of the network of brain connections with outside experiences, we will come closer to fully understanding how the numerous psychological disorders have been affecting many victims around the world.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=roots-post-trauma-resillience-sought-genetics-brain-changes
http://home.earthlink.net/~help_for_ptsd/ (picture credit)

Music and Language: Which really came first?

Music and Language. Two things that appear seemingly different. Their origins have been a subject of much debate and research. Did music come from language? Did language come from music? Do they even have anything to do with each other? 

As a musician, I find these questions quite interesting. I’ve been playing violin for around 13 years, so connecting music and language together and contemplating how they relate and what might have come first is very fascinating to me. Both Gary Marcus and Anthony Brandt try to tackle this question in their respective works. Reading what each had to say was enlightening because they have contrasting views; nevertheless, both provide solid evidence to back their claims. One one side, there’s Gary Marcus who, in Guitar Zero, states that language is innate, something we have naturally. And then on the other had, Anthony Brandt argues that “spoken language is a special type of music.” 

While Gary Marcus did talk about the possibility of language coming from music, he still believed that in the end, music comes from language. Looking at toddlers, one sees how they struggle when learning melodies compared “to the extreme speed at which toddlers naturally pick up language” (Marcus 40). Even children prefer speech over music, which is part of his defense as to why language is more innate. This provides an interesting contrast to Brandt’s argument because as I was reading, I then realized that they have different definitions for what the consider  to be music. Marcus seems to take it more literally while Brandt defines it as “a creative play with sound.” Part of why I think they came up with such different conclusions is because of this important difference in how they define music. When Brandt says that language acquisition comes from music, obviously he doesn’t argue that infants start singing before they talk, but he breaks down how they learn language by saying that infants “listen first to sounds of language and only later to its meaning.” It’s those sounds and the discrimination of the sounds of language which is “the most musical aspect of speech.”

Not only did they view whether language came before music or vis versa differently, but the way they looked at how music developed differed as well. Marcus saw the development of music in the human brain as something much more complex than Brandt. To Marcus, music is “something that is learned through extended practice, by people that already have both language and a sophisticated set of tools for acquiring new skills through training and cultural transmission” (Marcus 41). So not only does one need language but they have to be intelligent enough and they need enough practice and training in order to be able to learn new things such as music. Brandt, on the other hand, says he wants to challenge this view that music cognition takes more time to mature than language. He argues that they develop along similar time lines. No special skills required. 

At first when I was thinking about which side I agreed with more, I was torn between the two. Eventually, I was personally more persuaded by Brandt’s view that language comes from music. Near the end of the article, when Brandt talked about rehabilitation for strokes, his explanation as to why music helps reacquire language was that maybe that’s because that’s how they learned it in the first place as infants. While he said he still wanted to do more research to back that theory, I still found that idea to be fascinating and it’s what ultimately led me to agree with his findings.

Rice University. "Music underlies language acquisition, theorists propose." ScienceDaily, 18 Sep. 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120918185629.htm

Marcus, Gary F. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print.

Quantity and quality of education in learning

In Gary Marcus’ book “Guitar Zero”, there is significant mention of the quantity of work (namely brute practice) a person must put in in order to learn. Additionally, he comments on the innate talent of a person when it comes to learning and a teachers ability to guide a student, namely the quality of education as well as the starting point of a student. Both of these concepts are issues that schools face in order to provide better education and outcomes for their students, as noted in the article “To Increase Learning Time, Some Schools Add Days to Academic Year”, by Motoko Rich.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/education/some-schools-adopting-longer-years-to-improve-learning.html?_r=1

Rich explains that approximately 170 schools across the nation have been making an initiative to lengthen the school year in order to provide better education for their students, which Marcus would say is an attempt to increase the amount of practice that students are getting with the skills they are learning. Increased practice definitely helps, as it helped Marcus improve from someone with no rhythm to someone who could then play the guitar in a band, and it has helped students in certain districts, where reading scores have improved on average to 65% from 51%. Additionally, longer school years reduce the time where a child is sitting idle and is not immersed in knowledge, which Marcus says is very important for acquiring new skills, as the beginning of his learning the guitar involved him immersing himself in it during his sabbatical.

An interesting fact that Rich notes is that the schools that are lengthening their days in order to improve scores are typically those from families in a lower socioeconomic group, and comments that it is this group that needs longer schooling in order to catch up to other schools. Although this line of thinking isn’t politically correct, the insinuation is that lower income families are probably carrying genes that aren’t necessarily geared towards academics – as Marcus would say, the inherent talent for this group of people is lower than average. Because of this, they need more practice to achieve what someone with higher innate talent can achieve with less effort. However, this is not to say that you simply have a set amount of talent and varying amounts of practice and that’s it – Rich and Marcus both agree that quality of education is just as important as quantity, and that with a good guiding teacher who can understand the needs of the student as well as help them learn in a fun and exciting way, the ability to acquire new skills and learn new things is a much more efficient and streamlined process.

To conclude, it isn’t necessarily nature or nurture individually that will determine a person’s prowess in learning, but an interaction between the two. Basically, practicing hard is very important in learning a new skill, but having a teacher guide you by noticing your strong and weak points and designing ways for you to overcome them are just as important. 

Is language merely a subset of music?

Which came first, the egg or the chicken?

            Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists alike have long argued about whether music or language capacities develop first within humans. Some, such as Gary Marcus in his most recent book Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning say language must have come first, as there still isn’t any concrete evidence that proves music is required. On the other hand, Anthony Brandt and others at Rice University Shepherd School of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park recently released an article, “Music and Early Language Acquisition,” arguing that music comprehension develops prior to language and speaking abilities in humans. They provide evidence pertaining to newborn’s seemingly innate ability to distinguish between the differing sounds of language, the similarities in the time line of music and language comprehension, and the qualities of speech most similar to music being learned first.

In order for Brandt to make a valid scientific argument, music must first be defined: “the creative play with sound; it arises when sound meets human imagination.” This definition sets no rules on rhythm, time, or arrangement of pitches; nearly anything can be music. Whether this is a valid definition or not is difficult to say, as definitions between many people vary in their entireties, and everyone seems to have a problem with everyone else’s.

One point of Brandt’s is that research has been conducted demonstrating that newborn’s speech perception is dependent upon the discrimination of different sounds of language, “the most musical aspects of speech.” They primarily use pitch and rhythm cues in order to understand what or where a sound is coming from. In addition, infants are able to recognize and distinguish phonemes, or distinct units of sound, of all languages. Understanding the meaning of words and sequences of words comes after the fact; the identification of specific sounds and their variations must lay the foundation for the acquisition of language. One fantastic example of this, mentioned by both Marcus and Brandt, is the use of the so-called motherese voice; we’ve all heard it: mothers talk to their newborns with highly exaggerated pitches and rhythms; completely unlike they’d talk to any adult. Anyone who has talked to a baby knows it’s almost difficult not to talk in this manner – imagine a mother or father saying, “can you say mama?” to an infant. Does it sound plain and monotonous or melodious?

However, Marcus believes this type of speech could likely be due to non-innate qualities: parents may learn that infants “pay more attention to it, perhaps because it is easier for the infants to hear or because the high pitches of motherese intrinsically sound happy.” But Brandt argues that infants prefer infant directed speech because it “seems to reflect the musical aspects of motherese as this preference remains… even when the speech samples are filtered to remove lexical content while preserving the prosody.” Though this doesn’t quite prove that infants prefer motherese speech because it sounds happy or is easier to hear, it may be reason to believe that music precedes, if not presides over, language during development.

            As evidence against music being the foundation of language, Marcus states that while many people have a great deal of difficulty distinguishing between simple musical intervals and that nearly 5% of the population is tone deaf, toddlers have a remarkable capability in arranging syllables into sequences. This raises a valid point – if infants are so good at distinguishing between different pitches and phonemes, how could so many people have problems identifying simple musical intervals? But I might argue here that perhaps it is the mere comprehension, and complete comprehension that is, of exactly what, for example, a 3^rd or 5^th is that people have trouble with. They can distinguish the fact that the sounds are different, but perhaps the degree to which a 5^th is different just doesn’t quite make that neuronal connection. Whether it is due to the fact that the auditory area of the brain doesn’t make the right connection to the right comprehension centers or centers involved in singing and speech production, the lack of connection doesn’t necessarily mean music wasn’t a precursor to language – it could mean that detecting a different, just some difference, was enough to learn and differentiate patterns of speech.

            Marcus and Brandt agree that music and language are connected in some aspects, but the extent to which they agree varies. For example, Brandt explains that both recognizing the sound of differing consonants and the timbre of musical instruments require temporal lobe processing, and at nearly equal speeds. Marcus provides several examples of how language and music generally use the same areas of the brain, such as centers for memory or Broca’s area for combining smaller units of language or music into sentences or phrases, respectively. However, Marcus goes on to explain how though music and speech share their “neural real estate,” they use these regions in different patterns. Furthermore, though many different cognitive activities or functions require use of similar brain regions, no particular area of the brain has a single, absolute function.

            So, which is it then?

Though I’m not qualified to say, I’m going to have to side with music presiding over language during development. Marcus has many great points: language and music share brain regions primarily due to similarity in needed resources, adults being tone-deaf, and many others discussed in Guitar Zero. However, Brandt’s evidence for language being a mere subset of music, in addition to my own personal opinion that music is a more authentic, even primal, conveyor of feeling, leads me to believe that music precedes language.

Sources:

1. Marcus, Gary. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. New York: The Penguin Press, 2012. Print.

2. Brandt, Anthony, Molly Gebrian, and L. Robert Slevc. "Music and early language acquisition." Frontiers in Psychology. 3. (2012): 1-17. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. 

The Impact of Learning on the Brain

Does your brain change when you learn something new? Does it grow?

A study in Switzerland found that the intense study of language does in fact cause the brain to grow in specific regions.  The article "Language Learning Makes the Brain Grow, Swedish Study Suggests" from ScienceDaily.com explains that students of language at Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy went through an intense course where they learned how to speak  a new language fluently in thirteen months.  These participants were compared to a group of hard studying science students from Umeå University.  The researchers found from fMRI scans taken before and after a 3 month learning period that only the language students showed changes in the brain.  The hippocampus and three parts of the cerebral cortex not only grew in size in the language students, but these areas grew proportionally with how well the student mastered the language.

The concept of the brain changing due to learning new information is not entirely new.  Gary Marcus explains in Guitar Zero that the brain can form new connections from the circuits that already exist.  Performing  a certain task, such as speaking or learning to play an instrument, require various regions of the brain to work together.  Those regions form neural networks to get the task done.  When a person learns something new, the brain can form new connections.  The creation of novel networks is responsible for the growth in these brain regions  which is seen in the increase of gray matter.  Learning a new language requires the hippocampus, the superior temporal gyrus, and the middle frontal gyrus therefore those are the regions that grew in the language students. It is surprising that the students studying sciences did not have any change in gray matter.  Gary Marcus notes that the increase of gray matter is a staple of all types of learning, and what varies is the regions that grow. However, this study did not find any growth in the science group.  Perhaps the time length was not long enough to find a difference in size in the pre- and post- studying fMRI scans. It is very likely that the brain regions that change would not be the same, but it seems that there should be at least a small difference.

Perhaps the most interesting finding in this study is that the growth is correlated with how hard the students studied and how well the language was developed.  In both situations there was a large increase in the brain for students that studied more and for students that had better language skills. It is hard to find a better example of the importance of practice.  Gary Marcus stresses that to learn something new one must constantly practice.  It is not enough just to practice what you already are good at, but you need to practice the trouble areas too.  The students who put more effort into learning the language showed a greater increase in gray matter.  These students formed more neural connections than the students who did not put in as much effort, and it showed not only in their performance but also in their brains.  The more work you put into learning something the better the pay off will be.

 Furthermore, not only are there differences in the amount of growth that takes place during learning, but there are differences in the regions of growth depending on the strengths of the student. For students that had better language skills there was an increase in the superior temporal gyrus, but for students who put more work into studying there was an increase in the middle frontal gyrus.  Not only are there differences in the amount of growth that takes place during learning, but there are differences in the regions of growth depending on the strengths of the student. However, both types of changes the growth occurred because the students were studying.  In essence, practice makes a difference so go hit the books, pick up that instrument, or start kicking that ball around because your brain is ready to grow.

Article Link:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121008082953.htm

Is music really harder to learn with age?

When I was 13, my brother was 16 and my father was in his early fifties, we all decided to try to learn the guitar at the same time. It became obvious that my brother and I were learning the scales and basic songs much fast then our older father. We all just assumed that it was because of the old pseudoscientific saying that the older you are, the harder it is to learn music and language. We were always told that it is easier to learn when we are younger. Is this actually true? Why was playing the guitar much easier for my brother and I?

            Some obvious issues that middle aged people have over children is that their fingers get stiff when playing the guitar, and therefore can not practice for extended periods of time. Having stiff fingers also makes it harder for adults to keep up the pace of faster tempos. I would notice that my father would switch between chords significantly slower then my brother and I. Also, after your mid- twenties, memory tends to decline, making learning and retaining music harder for adults.

            Adults also have their life experiences working against them when they are trying to learn new skills. It is harder for them to learn new techniques, simply because it is learning something they were not used to doing their entire lives. Also, adults tend to get frustrated with the amount of repetition required to learn a new instrument or language. Children are not a bothered by repetition for unknown reasons. Gary Marcus compared children watching the exact same television show for five days in a row without loosing entertainment value to practice the same chords and scales on a musical instrument. Adults tend to get bored and frustrated with practice’s tedious nature, while children do not.

            Gary Marcus suggests that children do not necessarily learn faster and easier than adults do. He claims that children just simply have a better practice technique then adults and that is why they seem to learn faster. Children are excited by the novelty of a new instrument, while adults have already heard basic chords and melodies many times and are less fascinated by them. Also, at a young age, children tend to have pressure from their parents to learn a musical instrument. Having that parental pressure may drive a child to learn faster, while adults tend to pick up instruments for pleasure and do not feel such a pressure. Adults have work and other obligations while children have more time to dedicate to practice.

            Even though children do not necessarily learn faster and easier then adults, there are still benefits to learning to play a musical instrument as a child. Learning music early on will strengthen your range of auditory skills, and your brain is able to pick out essential elements in sound like pitch and complex sounds.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/education/in-middle-age-reviving-dreams-of-playing-music.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/early-music-lessons-have-longtime-benefits/

Born to Bolt

Practice makes perfect.  Or does it?  How many times have you heard this cliché statement?  If you played a sport or an instrument, you have probably heard it quite a lot.  Recent findings suggest that nature, compared to nurture, seems to play a much larger role than previously thought.  After the 2012 London Olympics, a very eye-opening concept was brought to the table.  Maybe practice doesn’t make perfect? What if you could do everything right (practice every day, workout/condition yourself, eat right, etc.) and still not win.  Well, researchers have found a simple answer to these questions.  Some individuals are simply born to win.  But wait!  This goes against everything that has been instilled in our minds.  What happened to work hard and you can do anything?  Sorry to crush your dreams, but the laws of nature speak for themselves.  Usain Bolt, a six foot five, Jamaican sprinter, obviously has an advantage being that his waist is four feet above the ground.  His stride is so long that he is a shoo-in for the gold, regardless of his hours of dedicated practice.  He is bound to win simply because he was born that way.

Marcus comments on the same concept, concerning his experiences with music.  He uses an analogy saying that the tallest trees aren’t the trees that get the most water, but rather the trees with the best genes.  Current findings are suggesting more and more that genetics plays a greater role in many things, even musical abilities.  Like trees, great musicians have ideal genes; genes that enhance musicality. 

There aren’t certain genes that make you the fastest runner in the world or genes that give you perfect pitch, but rather genes are detailed directions to build certain proteins, not behaviors.   Marcus makes it clear that the human genome does not contain “genes tailored specifically to music”, but instead a plethora of genes that work together to create superior (or not so superior) musicality. He states that the progression from gene to behavior is extremely complicated, but that these individual genes have multiple functions, ultimately determining that they are not dedicated solely to music. 

Although nature has been prominent within current developmental findings, Marcus stresses that “nurture” should not be overlooked.  He brings about another concept that environment and experience still play an important role; to get the best results nature and nurture truly need to go hand in hand.  Imagine having the “goods” to be a star athlete or a renowned musician but never reaching your potential because you were too lazy to pursue it.  Let’s be honest, practice and motivation are not completely independent of biology.  “How we respond to experiences, and even what type of experience we seek are themselves in part functions of the genes we are born with.  It’s not nature versus nurture; it’s nature working together with nurture” (103).  It seems to be that nurture cannot be exclusive from nature, and it may very well never be. 

In the wise words of Adrian Bejan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University, "Nature, being born a certain way—it's a prerequisite for nurture." Having a body built for speed produces an overwhelming advantage (and quite possibly, in some cases, might be enough), but you better believe that Bolt waited for that moment for four years, anticipating and preparing to cross that finish line and make history. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443570904577544984097844856.html?KEYWORDS=genetics%3A+nature+rather+than+nurture

Marcus.Gary F. Guitar Zero. New York: The Penguin Press. 2012. 1-202. Print.

Is music instinctual?

Scientists do not know of a culture that doesn’t have some form of music. Theories of why music is a common feature of all cultures include ideas such as it facilitates community and helps spread information. Humans are not the only species that manipulate sound, all kinds of animals use ‘music’ to attract mates, find food, and warn of impending danger. What is it about music that makes it such a fundamental component of human, and animal, interaction? Is it instinctual?

In 2012, researchers at McGill University in Montreal studied the relationship between listening to music and dopamine activity in the brain. They used fMRI technology to watch dopamine levels in patients who were listening to music as well as anticipating listening to music. The findings indicated that music increases dopamine levels in the listener’s brain. In addition, different areas of the brain were activated by different activities: listening to music and anticipating listening to music. What does it mean that music has an effect on dopamine?

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a large role in pleasure, learning, even movement and is involved in everything from drug addiction to Parkinson’s disease. One of dopamine’s most well-documented roles is in reward-based learning. When a person gets rewarded for some specific action, their brain releases dopamine, resulting in feelings of pleasure. Over time, the person learns to associate the behavior with pleasure, and continues to engage in the behavior. The finding that listening to music, or thinking about it, releases dopamine in the brain is consistent with the process of pleasure-based learning. So, it seems there is an intrinsic reward for listening to music.

In Guitar Zero, Gary Marcus contemplates the notion of ‘music instinct’ in humans. There is research, he points out, that infants can tell the difference between consonance and dissonance, recognize foreign rhythm deviations, and recognize ‘relative pitch’. These are very basic understandings of music, however, and they certainly don’t translate to the ability to play instruments. As Marcus puts it, “Although…the rudiments of both rhythm and pitch are in place by the end of the first year, a small initial sensitivity to rhythm and pitch does not a symphony make.” (Marcus 25-26) So, is there a music instinct?

Yes, but an intrinsic inclination to enjoy music is different than the intrinsic ability to create music. As Marcus learns firsthand, understanding and mastering a musical instrument requires thousands of hours or practice. The ability to play an instrument and create music on one is not intrinsic because it draws on many more complex abilities, like learning the mechanics of an instrument or the arbitrary labeling systems created by musicians. Of course an infant, or any untrained person, cannot ‘make a symphony’ because it requires understanding arbitrary symbolic representations of real concepts: a ‘C’ will sound the same regardless of what we call it. In addition, creating music requires learning to navigate an instrument, a task that also has little to do with rhythm and pitch and much more to do with the physical mechanics of the instrument in relation to one’s movements.

Even though people cannot instinctually sit down at a piano and play “Happy Birthday”, that does not mean there is not an innate inclination to music. What really matters when listening to music is understanding pitch and rhythm, tasks that one-year olds are capable of. The case for a ‘music instinct’ is strongly supported by the evidence from McGill University that listening to music releases dopamine. The human body does not like to expend energy on things that don’t enhance its survival, so the fact that listening to music, something that is often regarded as purely aesthetic, has intrinsic biological rewards is really exciting news.  

 The intrinsic reward in listening to music is probably one reason why musical novices devote literally thousands of hours to learning to create music. Marcus learned firsthand that creating music does not come naturally to the average person. It would be nice if a person could pick up a guitar and just play, but that kind of talent is reserved for legends. The rest of us will just have to stick it out and take advantage of the built-in skills we do have, while working hard to fine tune the ones we must learn.

 Marcus, Gary F. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print.

 

http://news.discovery.com/human/music-dopamine-happiness-brain-110110.html

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mouse-man/200904/what-is-dopamine