#brain study

started drafting my introduction for my research poster board ~

People who play drums regularly for years differ from unmusical people in their brain structure and function. The results of a study by researchers from Bochum suggest that they have fewer, but thicker fibres in the corpus callosum, the main connecting tract between the two halves of the brain. In addition, their motor brain areas are organised more efficiently. This is the conclusion drawn by a research team headed by Dr. Lara Schlaffke and Dr. Sebastian Ocklenburg from the biopsychology research at Ruhr-Universität Bochum following a study with MRI. The results have been published in the journal of Brain and Behavior (Dec 2019) Drummers presented clear differences in the front part of the corpus callosum, a brain structure that connects the two hemispheres and whose front part is responsible for motor planning. The data indicated that the drummers had fewer but thicker fibres in this important connecting tract between the brain hemispheres. This allows musicians to exchange information between the hemispheres more quickly than the controls. The structure of the corpus callosum also predicted the performance in the drum test: the higher the measure of the thickness of the fibres in the corpus callosum, the better the drumming performance. Moreover, the brain of drummers was less active in motor tasks than that of control subjects. This phenomenon is referred to as sparse sampling: a more efficient brain organisation in the areas leads to less activation in professionals. ---Via @neurosciencestuff

I don’t understand how that works.

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