New, fascinating research results
In 2015, a team of scientists from the University of Helsinki was able to verify higher intelligence, improved language skills and a more powerful memory among musicians. The ability to learn and remember was significantly better in the musically educated participants than in the control group with no musical training.
The active contact with music is one of the most complex performances of the human nervous system and challenges our “grey matter” in a very special way. Although the focus is usually on hearing, which takes place in the auditory cortex, other brain regions that are responsible for coordinated movement, creative imagination, seeing, and feeling are extensively involved as well. According to neuroscientists, it is this unique interconnection of the most different areas of the brain that ensures more mental flexibility and also a more developed language faculty. The fact that our language skills also benefit from intensive occupation with music is due to the fact that our thinking system shows almost the same reaction patterns to the sound of an instrument and the sound of a voice.
Scientists at the University of Jena and the Harvard Medical School in Boston have also found that the areas of the brain that are used for hearing, seeing and coordination are significantly more developed and therefore more capable in ambitious musicians than in amateurs. Modern imaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can now show such correlations clearly and unmistakably.
What does that mean for you and me?
Fortunately, our brains are capable of developing throughout our lives. This so-called neuronal plasticity enables us to process and learn new things from childhood to old age. This means that your actual age hardly matters when you get involved in the fascinating world of music production.
Like no other activity, producing music combines the most diverse skills in a playful way.
Most people have the necessary technology at home. It is already installed on your computer, or you can download it for free from the internet – just contact us if you have any questions.
Missing a musical background or the ability to play an instrument is definitely no hindrance either. For one thing, there are many styles of music that do not require a classical musical education at all (and yet still inspire the masses). On the other hand, musical understanding will develop automatically while working on the exercises of our audio engineering online courses. What matters is your enthusiasm for creativity and the ambition to realise your musical ideas.
And isn’t it great that all this has a long-term positive effect on you? Once you have started, this topic has the potential to challenge and help you to advance in many different ways throughout your entire life.
Here applies: “If you don’t use it, you lose it!”
The long-term benefits of making music are impressive:
- improved infrastructure of the entire nervous system
- reduced age-related loss of nerve cells, which begins already at the age of 25
- ageing processes are not only delayed, but in some cases even reversed
According to a long-term study published in the renowned “New England Journal of Medicine”, playing an instrument reduced the risk of dementia by up to 70 percent.
Conclusion
The initial question whether producing music makes you more intelligent can therefore not only be clearly affirmed, but we may also add the pleasant effect that it can help you in surprisingly many ways and can even help you to stay fit, young and healthy in the long term.
