THINKER'S ALMANAC - August 7

How can a piano exercise reveal our brain’s ability to constantly grow and change?

Subject: Neuroplasticity - Piano-playing Experiment

Event:  Birthday of Alvaro Pascual-Leone, 1961 

 

There is nothing permanent except change. -Heraclitus

Many people over the last 2,500 years have considered Heraclitus’ paradox.  He also used the metaphor of a river to talk about change, saying “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”  One person, neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone, wanted to put Heraclitus’ claims to the test.  His goal was to determine not just how much a man changes but specifically how much his mind changes?

Born on this day in 1961 in Valencia, Spain, Pascual-Leone conducted an experiment in his lab in 2006 at Harvard Medical School.  Subjects were taught a piano playing exercise over the course of five days, practicing for two hours each day.  To measure the change in the brain, Pascual-Leone used transcranial-magnetic-stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive test of neuron activity, where magnetic pulses are sent into the brain’s motor cortex by a wire coil.  Pictures produced by the TMS revealed that the area of the brain’s motor cortex devoted to finger movements grew significantly for the piano-playing subjects.    

Image by Daniel Eliashevskyi from Pixabay

The results of this first experiment were not too surprising; however, the follow-up experiment yielded truly astonishing results.  In the second experiment, Pascual-Leone taught subjects the same piano exercise as in the first; however, in this experiment, the subjects did not actually play the piano; instead, they merely thought about playing the piano.  Sitting beneath the same TMS coil as the subjects in the first experiment, the volunteers played the music in their heads, and instead of moving their fingers, they imagined the finger movements necessary to play the notes.

The TMS results of both experiments showed that both groups -- the literal players and the imagined players -- enlarged the region of the motor cortex devoted to finger movements.  In short, Pascual-Leone’s experiment proved that even the act of imagining something has the power to alter the brain’s physical structure.  

The implications of Pascual-Leone’s work are important for understanding our capacity for learning.  At one time neuroscientists thought that by adulthood the human brain was pretty much hardwired, but today more and more research has revealed the brain’s neuroplasticity -- its ability to change its structure and function in response to experience and learning.  Remarkably, rather than immutably fixed in its structure, the brain has the capacity for constant change.  In fact, we now know that the mind can change the brain through imagination (1).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is neuroplasticity, and how did Pascual-Leone’s experiment reveal the power of the human imagination?

Challenge - Just Imagine:  Do some research on quotations about imagination.  When you find one you like, quote it exactly, and explain why you like it.

Sources:

1-Begley, Sharon.  “The Brain:  How the Brain Rewires Itself.”  Time Magazine  19 January 2007.