What makes the musical mind unique

DATE: March 31, 2004
CONTACT: Ellen Chang
PHONE: (713) 348-6777
EMAIL: ellenc@rice.edu

WHAT
MAKES THE MUSICAL MIND UNIQUE
Neurologist to discuss brain function of musicians

A neurologist
at Baylor College of Medicine will discuss how musicians’ brains
function at a lecture April 13 at Rice University.

David Rosenfield
is a professor of neurology and the director of the Speech and Language
Center, Department of Neurology, at Baylor College of Medicine/The
Methodist Hospital. He is also a professor in the Department of Otorhinolarygology
and Communicative Sciences at Baylor and holds a joint appointment
as professor in the Department of Communications at the University
of Houston.
Rosenfield will discuss "The Uniqueness of Musicians’ Brains:
A Neuroscience Perspective" at 12:30 p.m. at Alice Pratt Brown
Hall, Room 1133.

He will give
an overview of brain functioning in musicians, beginning with simple
basics of neuroanatomy and concluding with ongoing brain investigations
that highlight the uniqueness of these individuals. He will address
issues of structure versus function, as well as necessary versus sufficient
conditions in analyzing how it is that musicians cerebrally orchestrate
their talents.

"Skilled
musicians are particularly adept in performing complex mental and
physical operations, such as translating visually presented musical
symbols into complex, sequential finger movements," he said.
"They can improvise, memorize long musical ‘phrases’
and identify tones without employing a reference tone. Being able
to play a musical instrument well requires the simultaneous integration
of multiple different sensory and motor responses, as well as sensorimotor
feedback mechanisms to monitor this performance."

Musicians’
brains have been found to be unique because of several behavioral,
neurophysiologic and brain imaging investigations.

"Not
only do skilled musicians have structural differences in their brains
when compared to non musicians, but their brains respond differently
to various musical tasks," Rosenfield said.

More research
has been conducted on which parts of musicians’ brains respond
to various musical and non musical stimuli, he said.

" For
instance, it seems that musicians having perfect pitch have unique
structural properties in the left portion of their brain and almost
always begin musical training by the age of 7," Rosenfield said.

Rosenfield
conducts research on how brains produce the motor aspects of speech.
He and his colleagues investigate patients with deficits in speech
production and also investigate the birdsong of Zebra finches. They
have established a birdsong model of stuttering, using phonatory sounds
of the Zebra finches as an example of aberrant sound production in
humans. Their research has received grant support from private foundations
as well as the National Institutes of Health.

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