All the neural signals are stuck in their villages, hemmed in by the jungle.
That’s a picture of my brain trying to learn “50 Ways.” I’m so slow, and so focused, that the sound of the metronome trips me up, at any speed. But without trails or roads-in this case, a network of neural pathways-the villager neurons can’t send their signals from one location to another each community is isolated from the next. And in each of those villages, imagine a small population milling about these are the neurons-tiny cells that carry messages from lobe to lobe, cortex to cortex, hemisphere to hemisphere. IMAGINE A drone’s-eye view of a jungle dotted with a handful of villages remote from one another these are the auditory cortex, the frontal lobe, the premotor cortex, the corpus callosum, and a host of other brain parts that process sounds, control body movements, correct mistakes on the fly, release dopamine, and so on. Second, the intense concentration I’m employing and the mistakes I’m making in playing the trickiest nine notes of Gadd’s beautiful drum phrase are precisely the tools working wonders for my brain. For starters, sounding bad doesn’t mean I am bad it’s just the first step toward getting better. But my frustration is coupled with genuine good cheer, thanks to what I’m picking up from the likes of Kraus. Sitting at the drum set, I’m slow and sloppy and seemingly hopeless. Not that you’d know it by hearing me try it for the first time. It’s sort of a drummer’s rite of passage, a wildly inventive but understated hybrid of syncopated jazz and military march. Learning the Paul Simon tune was near the top of my list. So I bought a cheap drum set for the man cave, reached out to a teacher, committed myself to weekly lessons and a few hours a week of practice, and came up with some goals. Then came a confluence of events that set me on my current path: the pandemic, the rise of Zoom, the specter of my 50th birthday, and my increasing ability to give fewer fucks about how good or bad I sound to myself or others. True to form, I spent the next three decades judging myself for that decision. I took lessons on and off as a young teen but lacked the work ethic, the patience, and, as years of therapy and reflection have taught me, the self-esteem required to make mistakes and withhold self-judgment, particularly in front of others. Playing an instrument in a focused and deliberate manner, she says, “engages so much of your brain, like the cognitive, sensory, motor, and reward systems, in ways that few other activities can.” Like Kraus, I’m a hobbyist. A self-proclaimed multi-instrumentalist “hack,” she plays music every day, even if she lacks expertise and only does it for a few minutes. “I call playing music ‘hitting the jackpot,’ ” says Nina Kraus, Ph.D., a neurobiologist at Northwestern University who recently published Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World. Translation: As long as you’re challenged in some small way, being bad at an instrument is good for you. What’s more, the physiological and psychological dividends are especially substantial if you’re a novice, or if you’re dusting off an instrument from your youth. And not just while you’re playing-the benefits can stay with you into old age. Researchers have also shown that the act of playing music-which includes singing-activates the brain’s limbic center and releases the chemicals, such as dopamine, that make us experience joy. Playing music can improve memory and cognition, help you hear and understand better in noisy environments, and even serve as an effective tool for treating patients with memory-destroying diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The simple-or maybe not so simple-acts of playing scales on a guitar, huffing into a trumpet, and tapping out paradiddles lead to tangible rewards. From UC San Francisco to Northwestern, from the University of Central Florida to Pitt and others, the findings are as consistent as our brains are complex. For much of the past two decades, doctors and scientists have been gathering heaps of evidence that not only suggests but flat-out shows how playing music makes your brain function better. To a neurologist who studies the effects of music on the brain, I’d be another thing entirely-a middle-aged man doing the equivalent of a full-body workout for his gray matter. To my long-suffering drum teacher, I’m one of countless amateurs he’s guided through a legendary pop-music groove-the intro to Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” played by the inimitable drummer Steve Gadd. TO A stranger, I’d probably look like an octopus having a fever dream-my twitchy appendages stomping the hi-hat pedal and whacking the snare when they should be doing something else.
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