quote:

---

Janata's study reports that some areas of the brain are 5% larger in expert musicians than they are in people with little or no musical training.

---

Does this mean your skull will grow through your hair? No wonder the experts are wearing hats!

------------------
Peter den Hartogh-Fender Artist S10-Remington U12-Hilton Volume Pedal-Gibson BR4 lapsteel-Guya "Stringmaster" Copy-MusicMan112RP-Peavy Rage158- - My Animation College in South Africa

November 15, 2001 Posted: 10:45 AM EST (1545 GMT)
SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- The brain waves of professional musicians respond to music in a
way that suggests they have an intuitive sense of the notes that amateurs lack, researchers said
Wednesday.

Neuroscientists, using brain-scanning MRI machines to peer inside the minds of professional
German violinists, found they could hear the music simply by thinking about it, a skill amateurs in
the study were unable to match.

The research offers insight into the inner workings of the brain and shows that musicians' brains are
uniquely wired for sound, researchers said at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

Neuroscientists often study how we hear and play music because it is one of the few activities that
use many functions of the brain, including memory, learning, motor control, emotion, hearing and
creativity, said Dr. Robert Zatorre of the Montreal Neurological Institute.

"It offers a window onto the highest levels of human cognition," Zatorre said.

In a study by researchers at the University of Tuebingen, the brains of eight violinists with German
orchestras and eight amateurs were analyzed as they silently tapped out the first 16 bars of
Mozart's violin concerto in G major.

Brain scans showed professionals had significant activity in the part of their brains that controlled
hearing, said Dr. Gabriela Scheler of the University of Tuebingen.

"When the professionals move their fingers, they are also hearing the music in their heads," Scheler
said.

Amateurs, by contrast, showed more activity in the motor cortex, the region that controls finger
movements, suggesting they were more preoccupied with hitting the correct notes, she said.

Scheler, a former violinist with the Nuremberg Philharmonic Orchestra, said the findings suggested
that professionals have "liberated" their minds from worrying about hitting the right notes. As a
result, they are able to listen, judge and control their play, Scheler said.

"Presumably, this enhances the musical performance," she said.

In a second experiment, the violinists were asked to imagine playing the concerto without moving
their fingers. Brain scans showed again that the professionals were hearing the music in their heads.

the latest Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT) Scans indicating:

1) Your Brain

2)Your Brain on Steel Guitar

------------------
Greg Simmons
Custodian of the Official Sho~Bud Pedal Steel Guitar Website

[This message was edited by Greg Simmons on 21 December 2002 at 10:50 AM.]

quote:

---

Neuroscientists, using brain-scanning MRI machines to peer inside the minds of professional
German violinists, found they could hear the music simply by thinking about it, a skill amateurs in
the study were unable to match.

---

By the way...while playing somewhere one night, a person came in and prodeeded to tell me how good my tone was out in the room and how well I played, etc,... blah, blah, blah (no doubt he must have been drunk because I was having a particularily bad night!). Man, that must have been "music" to my ears because after that my brain apparently started swelling and I had difficulty keeping my hat on! LOL!

One day I'm going to try to compose a steel guitar instrumental which I will entitle E=mc2.

E9=MC2

or E9=MCII