Brain changes after learning to read and play music

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Stewart, Lauren; Frith, Uta; Henson, Rik and Walsh, Vincent. 2003. Brain changes after learning to read and play music. NeuroImage, 20(1), pp. 71-83. ISSN 10538119 [Article]

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00248-9

Abstract or Description

Musically naive participants were scanned before and after a period of 15 weeks during which they were taught to read music and play the keyboard. When participants played melodies from musical notation after training, activation was seen in a cluster of voxels within the bilateral superior parietal cortex. A subset of these voxels were activated in a second experiment in which musical notation was present, but irrelevant for task performance. These activations suggest that music reading involves the automatic sensorimotor translation of a spatial code (written music) into a series of motor responses (keypresses).

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Article

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https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00248-9