O Caritas
Erin Zindle of The Ragbirds
Recent studies have shown brain differences between professional musicians and non-musicians with respect to size, asymmetry or gray matter density of specific cerebral regions…anatomical differences in the motor cortex can be detected by coarse visual inspection; and within musicians, a discrimination of instruments with different manual dominance is possible on a gross anatomical scale. Multiple raters, blinded for subject identity and hemisphere, investigated within-musician differences in the Omega Sign (OS), an anatomical landmark of the precentral gyrus associated with hand movement representation. The sample of 64 brains comprised…16 expert string-players, 16 expert pianists and 32 non-musicians… Musicians had a more pronounced OS expression than non-musicians, with keyboard-players showing a left and string-players a right hemisphere advantage.*
In other words, you can tell a musician just by looking at their brain—and if you know where to look, you can even tell what kind of instrument they play. This fiddler right here? With the beautifully deft hands and the look of deep, focused joy? Doesn’t just have those things. ALSO has a more pronounced expression of the Omega Sign in the right hemisphere. And if that isn’t the most amazing thing you’ve hear today, I want to hear what is.
*Bangert, Marc, and Gottfried Schlaug. Specialization of the specialized in features of external human brain morphology. European Journal of Neuroscience. 24(6):1832-1834, Sept. 2006.
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