Brain Plasticity and Music

The saying “You can’t teach an old an old dog new tricks” is not true. The reason for this is known as brain plasticity. Brain plasticity has been a topic of much interest recently due to technological advances and its practical implications in everyday life. On the New York Times’ website, an article called Early Music Lessons Have Longtime Benefits, by Perri Klass M.D, comments on this issue and a study done at Northwestern University. The article is about music lessons during childhood and brain plasticity. Considering major themes in Marcus’ book include persistence in tasks and brain plasticity, there is an obvious parallel between Gary Marcus’ book, Guitar Zero, and the article. 

 

In Early Music Lessons Have Longtime Benefits, Dr. Klass outlines a study at Northwestern University which found that adults who took music lessons as children perform better in experiments where they try to distinguish individual auditory elements from complex noises. What is interesting about this is that this occurred in adults that have not taken music lessons in years. This led the researchers to hypothesize that early musical exposure and practice have lasting effects on the brain which aid in auditory perception. 

 

In Guitar Zero, Marcus clearly states he has no natural musical abilities and, being a cognitive scientist, Marcus knew that the generally held concept of a critical period, where it is especially easy to learn something, had long past for him. However, he also knew that the plasticity of the brain would help him learn to play the guitar, albeit more slowly and gradually as compared to those who learn as children. Through patience and perseverance, Marcus manages to play reasonably well and comments by saying the patience of an adult can be a deterrent to learning something because adults expect to practice intensely for a day and become proficient but children have no problem with practicing something consistently over time. Persistence and consistently practicing over time are required to learn some new skill so that the brain can develop to properly learn the skill.

 

The persistence of children paired with their receptive brains are what make learning something, such as playing a guitar, relatively easy. However, it is the plasticity of the brain which makes it possible for older people, such as Marcus, to learn it at all and remember. This explains why those in the study, detailed by Klass, were able to retain the auditory aptitude to isolate individual elements of complex noises. Many new things can be learned despite one’s age, but persistence in these things is required to train the brain to become proficient in them. So throw a dog a bone if he does not learn as quickly as a puppy.

 

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