Musical brains notedly distinct

Don't be offended if musicians ignore what you're saying while music is playing - the language part of their brains could be already fully engaged, research from the University of Auckland shows.

PhD student Lucy Patston from the faculty of science has discovered that musicians hear music as a language.

"Past research has shown that musicians process music on the left side of their brain as opposed to non-musicians who process music on the right side," said Ms Patston, who is doing her research through the faculty's department of psychology.

"The left hemisphere is predominantly used to process language, so my research has been trying to find out if musicians actually process music as language."

Ms Patston tested 36 expert musicians and 36 non-musicians, using a battery of cognitive tests.

Each participant had to do two visual and two language tasks under three different testing conditions to see if their performance was enhanced or impeded.

"They had to do the tests with no music, while listening to music played with the right notes and while listening to music played with the wrong notes."

When the musicians did the language tests in silence, they scored better than the non-musicians. However, under the two music conditions their performance significantly dropped.

The performance of non-musicians was not significantly different in any of the conditions, suggesting they were not affected by the presence of music.

"The evidence from these initial tests suggests that musicians hear music as language because they have difficulty processing both language and music at the same time. The brain is competing for the same resources," Ms Patston said.

An unexpected finding of the research was that musicians scored higher in the test in silent conditions.

This might have repercussions for the way children are taught, she suggested.

Ms Patston recently received top prize in the faculty of science's Postgraduate Society Poster Competition for her current research work.

The competition provided an opportunity for students to display their research in a manner that non-scientists could easily understand.

She said the competition was a good way of developing skills to explain the technical aspect of her study to non-specialist audiences.

In the next phase of her research Ms Patston hopes to put candidates through the university's functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, which will show the specific parts of the brain working.

Using similar testing methods the machine will be able to further explore her findings.

- NZPA

Music and language

* Most people use the left side of their brain for analytical tasks such as language.
* The right side is used for more creative experiences, such as appreciating music.
* Musicians process music with the left side of their brains, suggesting they hear the notes as language.