Tag Archives: Study

Study Shows Musicians Have Superior Memory Skills

A study led by University of Padua psychologist Francesca Talamini shows that musicians tend to have stronger short-term and working memory (the ability to retain information as you process it) than nonmusicians. Published in the online journal PLoS One, the research also found a slight advantage in terms of long-term memory. Scientists looked at 29 studies (between 1987 and 2016) of young adults performing long-term, short-term, and working memory tasks. The musicians performed best on working memory tasks involving tonal stimuli, but also had an advantage regarding verbal stimuli. On short-term memory tasks, the musicians showed superior skills, whether they were asked to recall musical tones, verbal instructions, or visual images.

Researchers offer a few hypotheses including the possibility that people with better memories choose to become musicians. But, they believe it is more likely that their memories were improved because of the multi-sensorial nature of music training.

Charity Fights Mental Health Problems Among Musicians

A study published by the charity group Help Musicians UK looked at mental health within the music community. The research was driven by 26 in-depth interviews with musicians drawn from a pool of more than 2,000 respondents to the Can Music Make You Sick academic study. Among the contributing factors to musician mental health problems were money worries, poor working conditions, bullying, insecurity, and isolation from friends and family. Those issues are compounded by the reluctance of musicians to discuss problems due to fear of losing work.

Help Musicians UK made three policy recommendations to help address mental health crisis among musicians:

  • To embed discussion of mental health awareness in music education and promote wider understanding in the industry.
  • To create a code of best practice to demonstrate an organization’s awareness of mental health issues in the industry.
  • To ensure that mental health support services for the music community are both affordable and accessible.

Study Finds Jazz Musicians Have Unique Response to Unexpected Events

Wesleyan University Scientists used electroencephalography to examine the differences in the brain activity of classical and jazz musicians during unexpected chord progressions. The study, published in the journal, Brain and Cognition, included 12 jazz musicians (with improvisation training), 12 classical musicians (without improvisation training), and 12 non-musicians, observing them while they listened to a series of chord progressions. Some progressions were typical of western music and others were unexpected progressions. Jazz musicians had a different response to the unexpected progressions that demonstrated increased perceptual sensitivity to unexpected stimuli along with an increased engagement with unexpected events.