Playing music alters the processing of multiple sensory stimuli in the brain
Source: Science Daily: Mind and Brain
Piano practicing fine tunes the brain circuitries that temporally bind signals from our senses. Over the years pianists develop a particularly acute sense of the temporal correlation between the movements of the piano keys and the sound of the notes played. However, they are no better than non-musicians at assessing the synchronicity of lip movements and speech. Researchers have now discovered that pianists are significantly more accurate than the non-musicians in assessing whether the finger movements on the piano and the sounds heard coincided temporally or not.