Height of creativity? Musicians think `differently`

New York, Oct 04: Musicians are often said to be creative people. Now, a new study has claimed that they think differently than others as they use both sides of their brain. A team at the University of Vanderbilt has found that musicians use a creative technique, called divergent thinking, more effectively and use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person.

According to researchers, one possible explanation is that the musicians` elevated use of both brain hemispheres is what enables them to use both hands independently to play their instruments. Lead researcher Bradley Folley said: "Musicians may be particularly good at efficiently accessing and integrating competing information from both hemispheres. "Instrumental musicians often integrate different melodic lines with both hands into a single musical piece, and they have to be very good at simultaneously reading musical symbols, which are like left-hemisphere-based language, and integrating the written music with their own interpretation, which has been linked to the right hemisphere." For their study, the researchers recruited 20 classical music students from the Vanderbilt Blair School of Music and 20 non-musicians from a Vanderbilt introductory psychology course. Bureau Report