The Music Advantage by Dr. Anita Collins

Author:Dr. Anita Collins [Collins, Dr. Anita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

The ebb and flow of attention

One of the earliest discoveries in the field of neuromusical research was that professional musicians seemed to perform better on tasks that measured attention. Often these tasks were part of a series of tests into executive function of which attention skills were an important part. There has been a lot of debate about why playing and learning an instrument might result in heightened attention skills. Could professional musicians have a predisposition toward maintaining attention and are therefore able to practice their instruments for longer and consequently become better at them? Could it be that the act of learning and playing music itself improves attention skills? Or could it even be that music is a vehicle to enhanced attention and there is no deliberate learning or training required? As you have heard me say often by now, it is probably all of the above to some degree, and this is because every child is born with different dispositions and their development involves different influences and experiences. What we do know is that the nature of how music and attention are probably connected and possibly complementary is just beginning to be revealed.

Let’s start with music itself. When we listen to music we notice it is there, most of the time, and we may consciously acknowledge if we like it or not, or if it changes our mood. But what we probably don’t know is happening is that our brains are paying a lot of attention to the music and simultaneously separating and reassembling the sounds together. We don’t need to learn music to do this, but those who do learn music are sort of like mindfulness gurus of music. They are both aware of how their brains are processing the music and they can often put labels to the different parts of the music, like the instruments, the speed, or the bass line. To parallel a Buddhist meditation concept, it is the ability to label a thought as thinking, to stand back in our minds and see a thought and watch it float by without engaging with it. Musically trained people can hear the music float by, label all of its parts as melody, harmony, rhythm, and so on but can choose to be emotionally affected by the music or not. To do this, as a Buddhist or a musician, requires heightened levels of attention and cognitive control.

Our brains process music both as a moment in time and a continual stream of information. Think of a song you heard today. Imagine in that brilliant sphere of activity that is your brain you were listening for the melody of the singer, which is happening over time like a horizontal line, while simultaneously relating it to how the drum and bass lines, like a vertical line, were complementing the melody. Then your brain was also listening for repetition or something a bit unexpected in the music, predicting and expecting what comes next. Our brains love it both when our

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