Practicing and the brain

[slobone]

There's an article in the March 2008 issue of Scientific American called "White Matter Matters", which talks about the role of "white matter", or the axons that connect neurons in different parts of the brain, together with the myelin sheath that acts as a sort of insulation for them.  Apparently, when the myelin sheath is thicker and has fewer gaps, the nerve impulses travel a lot faster.

But here's the interesting part. "Piano virtuoso Fredrik Ullén... also happens to be an associate professor at the Stockholm Brain Institute in Sweden.... Ullén found that in professional pianists, certain white matter regions are more highly developed than in nonmusicians. These regions connect parts of the cerebral cortex that are crucial to coordinated movement of the fingers with areas involving other cognitive processes that operate when making music.

"He also found that the more hours a day a musician had practiced over time the stronger the [characteristic] signals were in these white matter tracts; the axons were more heavily myelinated or tightly packed...

"...Ullén's studies of accomplished pianists revealed an additional finding: white matter was more highly developed throughout the brains of individuals who had taken up the instrument at an early age. In people who learned after adolescence, white matter development was increased only in the forebrain -- the region that was still undergoing myelination.

"This finding suggests that the insulating of nerve fibers in part determines age limits for learning new skills -- windows of opportunity, or critical periods, when certain learning can occur, or at least occur readily."

In other words, the earlier you start, and the more time you spend practicing, the better chance you have of being an "accomplished player". It has to do with your brain, not your muscles.

Comments?

EDIT: Here's Ullén's personal website. He seems to have recorded a LOT of Sorabji...

https://www.fredrikullen.com/

[Petter]

Typical swedes, leaves nothing to imagination.

(PS. anyone able to hook me up with some of that white stuff?)

[faulty_damper]

This study also makes certain assumptions about how we learn.  This single variable was probably not accounted for, hence the interpretation that the younger they start, the better off they are.

There are many different types of learning.  Mostly adults rely on intellectual learning of a subject, that is, we read about how to play the piano instead of actually playing the piano.  For this reason, certain areas of the brain necessary to develop the skills will not develop because other parts are used to understand the task.  This is obviously a mistake in the learning process.

Children rely on experiential learning.  They must because they have no experience of the world.  At pre-adolescence when the brain has matured to a point, intellectual learning becomes pronounced.  This is the understanding part that adults are conditioned to think is the best.  This does not mean that experiential learning shuts off; it never does.  But this is the difference between children and adults and why children are seemed to learn new things better than adults: they naturally know how to learn a task.

[hyrst]

Well said, faulty damper. 

I would agree with that completely from what I have observed as a teacher - adults always think through the  learning (which can mean intelligent and creative technical probelm solving) while children just tend to 'do'.  With many of the young children, with all other variables being similar, the difference between the young children (5 to 9 years) who catch on really quick and those who struggle, is some sense of falling automatically into the 'correct way' of playing - posture and movement are more natural to them. 

However, adults who think creatively but still rely on a level of intuition progress well.  I find the mature thinking of an adult beginner can be an advantage in the beginning.  A balance between the thinking and the doing must be there, though - too much worrying about getting it 'just right' and the hesitation causes problems.

I think the study quoted also needs to take into account any significance of that proposed increased firing rate.  There are many massive neural systems involved in playing the piano - pretty much every system is communicating in the central and peripheral nervous systems.  Is there any actual benefit of the increased firing rate?  For want of a better analogy, is there a benefit in having a sports car that drives at 250 kph if the speed limit is always no more than 80 kph?  99% of drivers only require the average sedan, but some people have the opportunity to drive in a race.  Very few people aspire to be concert pianists, but most would be very happy to play Chopin Nocturnes or some Beethoven Sonatas.

There is no denying that if you want to be a concert pianist, you need to start out pretty young - if nothing else, this is how opportunity works socially (things such as entry to conservatoriums and performance experience).  The danger of these types of studies (like the one quoted) is that they are often taken too far and adult learners are discouraged, thinking they will never be able to improve or play well - which is far from true. 

[slobone]

Hyrst, that's a very good point, and in fact that's addressed in part of the article I didn't quote. 

"For complex learning, such as learning the piano, information must be shuttled back and forth among many regions; information flowing over different distances must arrive simultaneously at one place at a certain time. For such precision to occur, delays are necessary. If all axons transmitted information at the maximum rate, signals from distant neurons would always arrive later than signals from neighboring neurons..." and it goes on to talk about the nodes of Ranvier which regulate the speed of the impulses.

As for  faulty damper's point, that also seems to be correct. "Myelination generally proceeds in a wave from the back of the cerebral cortex to its front as we grow into adulthood. The frontal lobes are the last places where myelination occurs. These regions are responsible for higher-level reasoning, planning and judgment -- skills that only come with experience."

So presumably adult learners use different parts of their brain than those who begin a as children. This says nothing about whether they can learn as effectively.

A similar pattern is seen with language learning. If a child begins learning a second language around the same time they learn their first language, it will be processed in the same part of the brain. If they wait until adulthood, it will be processed in a different part of the brain (and will usually be harder to learn).

[a-sharp]

Interesting. (seirously)

I wonder, are there drugs available to increase the white matter growth for us older people? Something to consider....