What would you say if I told you there was an
exercise that, if practiced daily, would increase your IQ? What if I also told
you that the same exercise would improve attention and cognitive function, increase
the pain threshold, improve fine motor control, facilitate language acquisition
and verbal fluency, facilitate social cohesion, improve mood and reduce
fatigue, have a similar effect to Ritalin for ADD patients and provide a basis
for gait training in stroke and Parkinson's patients? You'd probably tell me to
stop spamming you and block me right? Admittedly it sounds too good to be true
and usually if it sounds too good to be true then it is too good to be true.
But what if I told you that there was sound scientific evidence for all of
these claims, and that each of them is based upon a number of studies that have
been published in peer reviewed journals? What if I also told you that to gain
some benefit you only had to do 10 or 15 minutes a day, and that even watching
people doing it is beneficial? Would you do it? Would you implement it in your
school or workplace?
The exercise is playing a musical instrument and it
is sadly lacking from most workplaces and many schools (there is currently no
provision for music in most primary schools in the UK). Exactly why this is the
case I'm not sure but I suspect it is, at least in part, due the double-edged
blade of pleasure...
Music is indeed pleasurable to listen to, which may
partly explain its enduring appeal throughout hominid evolutionary history
(Merriam, 1964; Blacking, 1995; Trevarthen, 1999). Even listening to music can
create intense emotional states that can produce measurable changes in brain
chemistry (such as the release of dopamine in the striatal system observed by Salimpoor et
al. 2011) while playing music affords musicians a greater
tolerance to pain, which in turn suggests that endorphins are being released
(Dunbar et al. 2012). But you can't escape the feeling that there's a bit more
to it than pleasure. Music has the power to alter our mood or to evoke
memories, we use it to help us concentrate or to relax, to synchronize our
movements and help us keep moving to the beat and at its most powerful, music
can transport us to another, dream-like world. Moreover learning to play a
musical instrument involves diverse skills such as fine motor control,
non-verbal communication, coordination, improvisation, focused attention and
creating a mental state where 'flow' can occur. Given the complex skills that
must be mastered in learning to play a musical instrument one might reasonably
ask if a) the acquisition of these skills leads to structural and functional
changes in the brain and b) these skills produce transferable effects on
performance in other areas.
So what does the research say? Does music have
observable effects on the brain, and does music training produce benefits in
other areas?
Many studies have found that musicians score
higher, on average, on a battery of tests than do non-musicians. For example
one study (Hanna-Pladdy & Mackay, 2011) looked at the cognitive functioning
of senior citizens as a function of the amount of musical training they had had
in their lives. Of three groups, the 'high activity musicians' were better at
performing visual tasks and were better at remembering words. Studies have also
shown that musicians have higher IQs (Ullen, 2008), a greater digit span (Fujioka et
al, 2006) and improved working memory (Parbery-Clark et al, 2009).
Yet
more studies have found differences in brain structure between musicians and
non-musicians and suggest that early learning of an instrument, followed by
years of practice, can have profound effects on your brain. For example Gaser
& Schlaug, (2003) found, "gray matter
volume differences in motor, auditory, and visual–spatial brain regions when
comparing professional musicians (keyboard players) with a matched group of
amateur musicians and non-musicians. Although some of these multi-regional
differences could be attributable to innate predisposition, we believe they may
represent structural adaptations in response to long-term skill acquisition and
the repetitive rehearsal of those skills".
Thus there is mounting evidence that learning to play a musical instrument
affects brain structure and function. Of course singing is a popular activity
that does not require learning an instrument. Nevertheless learning to sing is,
in many ways, a matter of mastering ones own instrument, and thus it is likely
that many of the benefits discussed above apply to singing. Indeed a 2009
study, commissioned by Chorus America, supported earlier findings
that adult choral singers exhibit increased social skills, civic involvement,
volunteerism, philanthropy and support of other art forms compared with
non-singers. Furthermore juvenile choral singers had more academic success and
possessed more valuable life-skills than their non-singing peers.
There
is even evidence that merely listening to music might have significant
effects in certain situations. Nilsson (2009) demonstrated that actively
listening to soothing music can increase a listener’s level of oxytocin, a
neuropeptide that plays a central role in the formation of social attachment
and relationships in humans and non-human primates. Blood & Zatorre (2001)
found that intensely pleasurable experiences evoked by familiar music activated
brain areas that are known to be active in response to other euphoria-inducing
stimuli, such as food, sex, and drugs. According to
Nathan Urban, a neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
when you concentrate your brain produces rapid, rhythmic electrical impulses
called gamma waves. Conversely when you relax, it generates much slower alpha
waves. It is likely, then, that the rhythm of listened-to music affects
brainwaves. Indeed this very idea has informed several successful clinical
therapies. For example Stanford News reported
that,
"Harold
Russell, a clinical psychologist and researcher in the Department of
Gerontology and Health Promotion at the University of Texas, used rhythmic
light and sound stimulation to treat ADD (attention deficit disorder) in
elementary and middle school boys. His studies found that rhythmic stimuli that
sped up brainwaves increased concentration in ways similar to medications such
as Ritalin and Adderall. Following a series of 20-minute treatment sessions
administered over several months, the children made lasting gains in
concentration and performance on IQ tests and had a notable reduction in
behavioral problems compared to the control group. Russell hopes to earn
approval from the Food and Drug Administration to use the brainwave entrainment
device as a treatment for ADD. The device uses an EEG to read brainwaves and
then presents rhythmic light and sound stimuli through special eyeglasses and
headphones at a slightly higher frequency than the brain's natural rhythm"
According to the same article Thomas
Budzynski conducted similar experiments with a small group of underachieving
college students. He found that rhythmic light and sound therapy helped
the students achieve a significant improvement in their grades. Thus it
seems that rhythm has observable effects on the brain and that these effects
can be cognitively beneficial.
So, to summarize so far, playing a musical
instrument requires a number of acquired skills that lead to structural changes
in the brain and cognitive benefits for musicians. Merely listening to
music confers many benefits and rhythmic sound and light can be used to improve
concentration by altering brain waves. But as we shall see, that's just the tip
of the iceberg...
As a treatment, rhythm has also been used with
Parkinson's and stroke patients. With the addition of rhythmic auditory
stimulation (RAS) to a standard physical therapy gait programme for stroke
patients improvements were seen in velocity, stride length and muscle
functioning (Thaut et al, 1997). Also, since children with specific language
impairment also show impairment of music-syntactic processing, it is possible
that music training might mitigate against impairment.
The
music that I currently play (West African djembe and dundun) is often referred
to as a language. Indeed the Maninka verb for 'To Play' and 'To Speak' is the
same (Ka Fo) suggesting a close association between music and language in West
Africa. There has been much research in this area, and the link between music
and language is well documented. For example, when Brown et al, (2006) asked
amateur musicians to vocally improvise melodic or linguistic phrases in
response to unfamiliar, auditorily presented melodies or phrases they found that
the same brain areas were used in both tasks; when Charles Limb (2008) used
FMRi on Jazz pianists he found that when they were 'trading 4s' (a technique in
Jazz where an improvisation is passed back and forth between musicians) their
Brocas areas were very active, suggesting that musical improvisation uses the
language areas of the brain. Further neurological evidence of the link between
music and language is provided by the observation that children with specific
language impairment also show impairment of music-syntactic processing
(Jentschke et al., 2008). But perhaps most interesting of all is that mirror
neurons can be activated by sound.
Mirror
neurons were a big deal when they were discovered in 1992 by Di
Pellegrino and colleagues. They were the kind of game-changing discovery that
makes you think about something in a completely different way. Mirror
neurons were cells in macaques that fired both when the monkeys performed
a particular action and when they watched the same action being performed
by another individual! Mirror cells didn't seem to care who was performing
the action, suggesting that our brains are actually rehearsing the movement
when we watch someone perform an action. I really will get better by watching
master drummers! Even more interesting then, is the finding by Kohler, E. et al
(2002) that mirror neurons in primates fire when an action is performed, seen, or heard. Moreover these neurons were located in the monkey homologue of Broca's area, the same area of the brain that is so important in language production. Think about this for a minute
because it really is quite profound...these cells are activated by sound but they
represent much more than that; they are activated visually but they represent
much more than just visual information; Kohler et al. propose that these
neurons encode the meaning of an action and
as such could form the basis of language acquisition!
Thus it seems that sounds that are linked to actions activate mirror neurons it the language centres of the brain. As a djembe player who has been playing
and practicing hard since the year 2000 it is likely that quite a lot of my
brain represents drumming actions. According to the research on mirror neurons
these 'motor programs' will be activated when I drum, when I watch someone
drumming and also when I listen to someone drumming! So when I listen to
that Iya Sako CD while I'm driving my brain is practicing drumming! Wow! But
this makes total sense to me as a djembe player. When I sing a rhythm
(something that djembe players often do) I can feel my hands wanting to move. The effect of learning to drum as part of a group on language acquisition per sé is not known, and would form an interesting area of research, but after 3 years of living in West Africa I have an anecdotal observation: West Africans are incredible linguists. Most West Africans I met spoke their own ethnic language, one or two other local languages to some extent, plus at least a decent amount of one or more colonial languages (usually French, English or Portuguese). It is very common to have a conversation amongst a group that flits back and forth between several different languages. I remember having a hilarious conversation with two truck drivers in The Gambia; one spoke Mandinka and French, the other spoke Fula, Mandinka and English, while I spoke English and a decent bit of French. Thus no matter what language was spoken at any one time, there was always one person who didn't understand and had to be translated for! I met one amazing lady from Sierra Leone who was working at a refugee camp in Guinea Conakry. She proudly told me that she spoke nine languages and then proceeded to talk in all of them! Amazing, but it is by no means unusual in West Africa to speak four, five or six languages to a reasonable standard. Rhythm, drumming and singing as a community...is woven into the fabric of life in West Africa. Infants are immersed in it from the womb and thus if drumming did facilitate language acquisition then West Africa would be a good contender for superior language skills...
Whilst it seems that on a neurological level
music and language have much in common, music and language learning also
share many features: Musical
competence is unconsciously and automatically acquired upon exposure and
develops along a standard biological timetable (Miller, 2000, p. 335), with a
sensitive period (after which musical skill is substantially more difficult to
acquire) occurring around 7 years of age (Habib and Besson, 2009, p. 279; see
also Elbert et al, 1995; Schlaug et al, 1995; Watanabe et al, 2007). Indeed
the incidence of absolute pitch has been found to be much higher in China than
in the US even when groups are matched
for age of onset of musical training, suggesting that the potential
for acquiring absolute pitch may be universal, and may be realized by enabling
infants to associate pitches with verbal labels during the critical period for
acquisition of features of their native language.
Whilst
the studies considered so far have focused on the effects of music on the brain
and cognition, as well as the link between music and language, other evidence
suggests that music confers social benefits. In one study four year olds
learned an activity in which they either a) learned a song and sang it as they
synchronized their steps to music and walked around a pretend pond or b)
crawled around a pretend pond without musical accompaniment. In a subsequent
game those who had sung and marched together were more likely to act
cooperatively than the other group. Thus it seems that coordinating our actions in a
rhythmic activity promotes cooperative behaviour. Researchers from Singapore found that a musical beat facilitates concurrent stimulus processing, allowing synchronization across a group of individuals. I have already presented
evidence that listening to music can increase levels of oxytocin (Nilsson,
2009), and these diverse strands of evidence lead some to argue that musical
behavior is evolutionarily adaptive because it promotes group coordination and
cohesion among members, and synchronizes group actions, emotions and identities
(Merriam, 1964; Turnbull, 1966; Lomax, 1968; Hood, 1971; Seeger, 1987; Feld,
1994; McNeill, 1995; Trevarthen, 1999; Cross, 2001, p. 37; Levitin, 2006, p.
258; Brandt, 2008, pp. 6–7).
In
his article, Music, Neuroscience, and the Psychology of Well-Being: A
Precis, Croom (2011) argues that "synchronized chorusing
has been found in certain species of insects (Greenfield and Shaw, 1983) and
frogs (Klump and Gerhardt, 1992), and fireflies have been shown to synchronize
their bioluminescent flashing at night (Buck, 1988). Researchers have also
found that there are at least several hundred species of birds that perform
precisely synchronized duets in order to stay in sync reproductively,
strengthen partnership bonds, or defend territories (Brown, 2000b, p. 247). So
it is plausible, many group selectionists argue, that musical behavior likewise
evolved in humans to unite individuals into groups and strengthen partnership
bonds (ibid). “Singing, marching, and laughing tunes the group,” as
Seligman (2011) says"
Furthermore he argues that being in a musical group
or band serves as a means of creating close relationships since rehearsal of a
musical piece provides band members with a common purpose. It also means that
members spend a lot of time with each other working towards a common goal.
Participation in music, says Croom, is participation with, and commitment to,
other people. In this sense music is a fundamentally social activity,
and it is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that playing music confers social,
as well as cognitive and neurological benefits.
So, to take us right back to where we started, what
would you say if I told you there was an exercise that, if practiced daily,
would increase your IQ, improve your attention and cognitive function, increase
your pain threshold, improve your fine motor control, facilitate your language
acquisition and verbal fluency, facilitate social cohesion, improve your mood
and reduce fatigue, have a similar effect to Ritalin for ADD patients and
provide a basis for gait training in stroke and Parkinson's patients? Would you
do it? Would you implement it in your school or workplace? I have presented a
wealth of evidence that learning to play a musical instrument and doing so as
part of a musical group confers these and other benefits. Of course you may
respond that learning an instrument is hard and requires years of dedicated
practice before one can play coherently as a member of a group. While this is
broadly true there are at least two musical activities that can be accessed
immediately: Singing and drumming.
While learning to play hand-drums is a skill that
is no easier than learning to play any other instrument, it is something that
can be accessed very quickly by beginners. Whereas on a guitar one has to train
ones fingers to play several chords before music can be accessed (and I know,
from personal experience, that this takes a certain amount of time, effort, and
pain) pretty much anyone can be taught to play a simple rhythm on a hand drum
such as a djembe, and to play it as part of a group. As a drum workshop
facilitator I regularly give that experience to groups who claim not to have a
musical bone in their body. I do workshops with children as young as five as
well as team-building sessions with adults who have never played a musical
instrument and all, without exception, are playing music as part of a group
within 10 minutes!
So read back over the research discussed in this
article and ask yourself this: If you could find a single activity that could
confer all these benefits wouldn't you be mad not to incorporate it into your
daily routine? Wouldn't you jump at the chance to implement it in your school,
place of work or community?
Well the activity is learning to drum as part of a
group and there are musicians such as myself all over the country who
facilitate high quality African drumming and rhythm workshops for schools, community and team-building.
Drumming might not be a miracle cure, but if you could put all those benefits
in a bottle it would sure look like one!
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