The Brains of Musicians - Dr. Ellen Winner on Neuroplasticity 

I started playing the viola at 80 years old and I’m told my progress is excellent! It’s never too late and you can teach an old dog new tricks!!😀

the larger parts of musicians brains is where the crazy lives

This is very interesting stuff. I don't think you should get discouraged by this interview, as some of you seem to be. Nowhere did she say you can't learn new things, only that there is some evidence that it will be harder. The real reality though, is that kids have more time to practice than adults. If an adult dedicates several hours of proper practice a day, they will advance fairly quickly. I've been teaching guitar since a year after I started playing (around 18-19 years now). I've taught many seniors successfully. My oldest student was already 68 when he started. He had just retired and had always wanted to learn guitar. He started practicing 2-4 hours per day, because he easily had the time and enjoyed it. He went from beginner to a high intermediate- somewhat advanced skill level in less than a year. He had never played another instrument, and he was significantly less coordinated than many other students when he started. He simply put in the time necessary, with proper guidance of what and how to practice. Bottom line, it's more about having enough time to dedicate to learning something, practicing the right material, in the correct manner, than how old you are when you start.

I like her, she's a winner.

My thought is that it is not simply playing that makes a player good, but what you play as well. This means that factors other than the physical aspects of practice inform your playing, so listening to music and how you interpret that music counts too.

Werther’s originals man. Skillz

Fascinating. I have played music since I was a child and played drums and a little guitar in several small combos, big bands and orchestra's. by the time I graduated university. But my working life took a completely different direction as a graphic designer and later high school science teacher. I am getting ready to retire and am trying to revive my interest in jazz guitar playing. It's hard work but I am progressing slowly. Playing music seems to stimulate the brain so I think its good for health and well being.

Very interesting but...I learned Handstand walking after the age of 35 and made my biggest improvements regarding Guitar echnique since Cracking the Code started. Picking the trilogy lick or the Gilbert lick are possible after a good warm up. I am 41 now. Regarding younger people and skills my observation was, that they get it fast and loose it fast.

I was born a musician and started playing by ear when I was 9, when my grandma was gifted a keyboard. I went on to study the piano and play the guitar and bass by ear. I also studied how to produce electronic music. I definitely think u can become a musician but my 2 sisters and mom started studying the keyboard when I did (before I studied the piano) but they all gave up and probably don't care enough to remember how to play it.

Super interesting stuff ! Thank you very much Mr Troy Grady !

Troy this is great info. Please keep it coming!.

I would love to have my brain scanned. For so many reasons. I'm insanely musically inclined and I have bipolar so I've always wondered how those factors effect my brain.

I started violin lessons at 65 when I retired. I’m now at Intermediate level after 8 years, and it’s been a hard slog, but I really enjoy it. I hope it helps my brain!

Worth noting that most of the greats have been playing since they were kids, and sometimes taught by legends eg Satch got lessons from really practiced jazz musicians. I hope in the future music is just like reading and writing, compared to the days when that was a rare and remarkable skill. Jamming with people is like having a wordless conversation, you get to really know people without even hearing them talk

This is really interesting. Thanks a lot !

The bilingual upbringing keeping the door open for longer rings true. I started getting exposure to english around 4yrs of age, and now I can more or less say I have two first languages; Eng and Spanish. Im currently in my late twenties and studying mandarin and I gotta say Im picking it up fairly well. Not to mention in the past I've dabbled here and there with french and portuguese and I honestly think I could be fluent in portuguese in less than a year and french maybe in 1 1/2 years if I ever actually sat down to study them.

I can tell you now that the brains of prodigies are the same as most people's regular brains. Everyone more or less becomes a prodigy in speaking their native language and musical skills emanante or are processed in the same part. What makes a prodigy is access to the language of music and suitable encouragement at the stage in which languages are easier to learn by children. The key to becoming a great musician is access to sufficient good quality aural resources and the information age with platforms such as youtube have enabled a rise in virtuoso musicians and polyglots. It's hard to learn a foreign language if you never hear it. I speak as a language teacher/learner and musician and music teacher with 35 years experience observing these two phenomenons.

A really interesting video, thanks. If Dr. Ellen happens to be reading the comments, I just want to tell her she is a very beautiful woman!

I only started seriously playin piano at the age of 20 or so, and after just 6 years or so, I can play pieces bordering on the absolute highest virtuoso literature available. I'm confident given another few years, that last level will be relatively easy to conquer (assuming I wanted to)

Very interesting,simple to understand.Beautiful woman!It's ok,I'm a musician!😆💚

From what i've heard our perspective of time changes dramatically during our lifetime. I remember that when i was a kid an hour woul d take forever to pass. now in my midtwenties the days just don't seem to have enough hours also as a recovered drug addict i experienced the same thing with days that lasted forever and now i'm just warming up when the day is already over. it makes me thing when research says that learning something new as we get older just takes more time. I think it takes the same ammount of time but what changes is our priorities and our perspective of time.

I have played music for as long as I can remember by ear. Maybe I was born that way, maybe not. All I know is that it is so much a part of me that I can't imagine not doing it.

currently taking a neuroscience course and am learning the piano quite profusely so this is a v interesting topic!

Intriguing!

@Troy Grady I speak 4 languages and learned computer programming languages by anchoring the concepts to my spoken language skills. I've since gone on to playing guitar, ukulele, bass, and percussion over the past several years. I learned music theory quite easy by viewing music as a language and anchoring it to all my other languages. It's about chunking and associating it with previous knowledge. It's about nailing down the bigger picture and seeing patterns and concepts. So with playing guitar, I was able to learn it and apply skills across other instruments. I'm nearly 50 now but I haven't slowed down. My friends think I'm a "genius" now that I've got my PhD and am fluent in a bunch of languages, plus playing music, but the honest truth is that no one sees how much time I invest in my learning and practice. To be fair, I'm anything but a professional musician, but I can finally hold my own now and am excited to keep learning. Bottom line: there might be some nature as a factor in my abilities, but it's mostly been obsessive learning, practice, and application. Keep up the great work! I really liked your Cracking the Code series!!

One of the most interesting videos on youtube

I’ve been singing since 4 years old. Stated listening to music at 5. Wrote poetry at 13. Learned quitar at 9. Self taught piano . Wrote lyrics and music and recorded eighty songs . Just stopped all this in 2019. I was absolutely miserable. I had to rewire my brain to push away words. Learned to sleep and shut down my thoughts. Learned to have normal conversations. The creative world of building a song is celestial. I’m just kinda numb right now . Just here. I miss it terribly.

Don't care have to keep practicing.

what's different about music is the evolution the mind takes. You go from learning about finger positioning and scales to mechanical playing. that is being able to play songs by memory. To being able to improvise. I learned how to improvise with myself but just changing that one aspect of adding other musicians should cause tremendous growth as long as you have chemistry.

Dr Ellen ❤️

I Always thought that it was the same for muscle memory and growth. I used to ride a bike longer distances as a kid. I put cycling away for a few years, at a time but always seem to ne able to pick up where I left off so to speak. it's like waking up the body. after a long nap.

I learnt a second language at 35 (German) because I currently live in Germany. I can really attest that it is very hard at that age but it is doable to a high standard. It takes a long time though. I never lost my English accent though. I am now 50 and just taking up guitar.... I seem to be making good progress...

When I was in colleague I heard young (around 19) and older (around 35) people say "I just can't learn it" without trying enough AND not having the proper mentor to quit learning maths and physics, they were stuck. I would seat and help my friends to study and very importantly saying "it is not that difficult, you can do this" and would see them going from failing tests to passing test. Can they reach an elite level? I don't know but I can say for sure they managed to overcome an emotional barrier "I can't" and then they would take off and improve their skills. I think there is bigger number of emotional distractions (pay the bills, feed the children, etc.) that makes people not able to focus as they would like to on learning something new, I am more concerned about really.

It’s work ethic- put in your practice time- all the greats do 😉

Yes All have to say

Maybe have you heard of the work of Rick Beato, whose children developed perfect pitch after some kind of specific musical conditioning by the use of a listening schedule of complex music pieces. I believe he says interesting things about brain plasticity, more related to music as a 2nd language in this case, that you might find interesting. Plus, he's got some results, even if we cannot scan a prenatal babys brain while the listening began (using headphones on the mothers belly, yes, you read that right :D)

"There is one exception to having young rate of neuroplasticity as an adult, when you have a solid enough reason to change, you brain will provide you with enormous amounts of neuroplasticity, just like young people" -Dr Andrew Huberman. Basically you need to be passionate about changing as an adult.

Lesson on intense rhythm guitar playing mechanics please!

The more languages you know, the more easily you can learn a new language. And yes, learning an instrument is definitely harder when you're an adult. I don't know of anyone who learned to play an instrument late who became a virtuoso on it. I know artists who switched to cello later in life. They practiced diligently but never became that good at it. There may be exceptions but they're exceptions.

Hope there's more of that interview it was really interesting.

What a beautiful woman.

Very interesting 🤔🙄

The thing with language learning isn't that it's 'harder' to learn as an adult, it's just different. A child can pick up more of a language with less effort as their brains are wired this way, although an adult probably has to 'study' and do more focused practice to achieve the same results - but the results are there to be had. I'm 36 and I've been playing guitar for around 18 years, but it's only in the last 12 months I've been focused on learning sweep picking, and I would say I'm 80% towards being at my target level (fast and clean) - so even learning new shredding skills isn't a hindrance as an adult. Maybe if I was 12 it would take me 50% less time.. who knows, but again, the same results can be had with focused effort.

Published on 4/20

It will be harder as you age but it's not impossible.

Does growing one area come at the expense of another, or is it just strictly bigger?

Im 33 and I've just bought my first guitar....guess I'll try to prove this theory wrong

This reminds me of a karate saying: "Karate is like boiling water". If you stop practicing, your skill quickly stops "boiling", like a pot of boiling water taken off the fire. You can learn a skill, but it will gradually die out if you stop practicing.

I suffered a severe brain injury at 8. i have been trying to learn guitar for 10 years. Its not working which pisses me off. i wish they would have left me dead. my life has not been worth the pain and suffering i have been through.

Steve Kaufmann would find this the language portion of this conversation fascinating. He's over 70 and he's still learning new languages.

Musicians are surprisingly functional while on massive amounts of narcotics. This has been demonstrated.

When you are younger you have more time to spend practicing, less time learning skills for a job. It's not a like for like comparison really.

@sylver, his kids developed perfect pitch or learned it? I thought it could only be develped (ie, Innate)

I started to learn playing guitar at 22... And now this is my excuse why I still suck at playing it.

Next video she meets the Magnet.

Summary: I feel a lot confident about what I'm talking about but I honestly, don't know. Good vibes

Everything mechanical involves hand to eye coordination

The fact that you see this comment is a start to understand how cool we are.

Mmmm, that's good brain science!

Practice, practice and more practice. This will help you master anything. Music legends of India spends not less than 12 hours a day practicing their instruments. They are still as sharp as ever when they give a concert or a recital even when they are in their 80s or 90s. Morden living has tempered our talents and gifts due to the fact that we have to choose between earning our bread and butter verses time to expand the arts. So here we are paying to watch concerts and performances by musical artists.

This means that if you don't play the guitar for few weeks, you'll lose come capabilities, right ? That's what i'm really affraid of :( Sometimes I just play the guitar just to maintain my skill, even if I don't want to do it !

This woman

MUSIC TO THE BRAINS IS LIKE A WHAMMY BAR TO MY FRANKENSTRAT. =vh=

Musicians use their innate musicality to solve every day problems. One who learns how to play songs on their instrument is not always a musician.

His voice sounds so much like that Jesse Eisenberg!

I'm a one man band trying to write some romance lyrics.

Is she eating candy?

Why are professors always snacking when they explain something, and why is it not considered rude as in it would in other situations

Is very pretty now and was probably a knockout at age 22 or so.

What about the brains of drummers? You know, the guys who hang around musicians and beat on things after their shelter provider/girlfriend drives them to the gig?

i wish you at least let her eat her candy

if only she wasn't chewing gum while talking in this interview

This is a good interview; but for heavens sake what is she chewing on? It really started to bother me unexpectedly 🤣

This lady is promoting Einstein as being brilliant, and he may very well have been (remember, theories are theories, as in E=MC squared is a theory, as opposed to the fact that E=E, and I hope someone's head didn't just explode, hahaha!). It is said that this theory gave birth to the atom bomb. Me personally, I don't see any evidence that the atom bomb really exists. Now I know we have huge explosive and bomb capabilities, but nuclear weapons? IMO based on what I have witnessed that the thought process of some of these is, (example: whoever it was that came up with the concepts on the Georgia Guidestones), if these had atom bomb weapon capability, they would have used it to eliminate 85% of the world's human population a long time before now in order to achieve the population goal depicted on the Georgia Guidestones. What about the WWII Japan bombings? Comparing the footage of Tokyo, which was fire bombed, to footage of the two cities that supposedly had been nuked, I'd have to conclude that those cities were fire bombed as well, and the atom bomb thing was hype. My point is, if there is no proof that these types of weapons exist that function in the way that it is hyped to us, then places like Iran aren't any closer to getting a nuke than Israel is to allegedly already having 80 of them, or the US or Russia both independently having their own stock pile in the range of 7000 of them. That would make Einstein a different kind of genius; the kind that convinces people that the things that can only exist in theories, cartoons, books of science fiction, etc., actually exist in the physical world as well. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xWCUvDVZT94.html

What the hell is she chewing?

Respect 100% but maybe don't have a candy in the mouth when you giving interview. I'm so sorry is just kind of picking to me .

She's not taking into account behavioural differences that affect adult learning. A child will learn a language faster at least partly because they can't speak a lingua franca, they are not afraid of being embarrassed and they are taken care of by adults 24/7. She makes assumptions. That's not science.

Why are you eating a candy or ?? during the interview?