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In the process of learning music the brain modifies, it actually enlarges within certain areas connected with this particular task. Studies (Pascual-Leone 2001) and brain scans have revealed that the musicians’ brain is different; for example a piano player has got more gray matter in the region that controls the fingers’ movement.

In the study named “The Effects of Musical Training on Structural Brain Development several scientists namely Krista L. Hyde, and Alan C. Evans (from Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University), Jason Lerch from (Mouse Imaging Centre, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada),Gottfried Schlaug, Andrea Norton, and Marie Forgeard (from the Department of Neurology, Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School) and Ellen Winner (from the Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA) have brought relevant insight with their study. They investigated the structural changes that occur in the brain as a result of 15 months of instrumental music teaching on young children; this group was compared to a group of children that did not have musical training.

As expected, the children who participated in the music training showed improved finger moving and rhythm task yet the tasks that did not involved musical field remained the same. The gray matter development has been also observed in areas other than those directly connected with music namely – hearing and finger moving. The complex process of learning produces growth in other parts of the brain and these facts lead to the idea that long-term programs of brain training may well help neuron growth in children. This is particularly relevant for children with developmental problems as well as for grownups with neurological conditions.

Musicians generally have more gray matter (Schlaug et al 2005) compared to non musicians and he also has shown that children who play instruments have also a significant increase of gray matter. What’s more, when professional and amateur musicians are compared, it is clearly revealed that the professionals who actually practice twice as much have again, more of a brain development than the amateurs (Gaser and Schlaug 2003). It is than obvious that brain development can be associated with learning music, yet is this development only significant for music related tasks or is it relevant in other tasks as well?

Studies conducted on musicians and non-musicians bring light upon a diversity of differences, some notable and some statistically proven. A testing on cognitive tasks (Schellenberg 2006) shows that musician usually do better than their non-musical peers when it comes to cognitive tasks. Also increased memory levels have been noticed in musically trained children with ages between 4 to 6 years old when compared to the non-musical children of the same age. Read the rest of this entry »

Podcasts are audio (mp3) files made available over the internet but more importantly subscribers to a particular podcast are notified when the latest topic becomes available and it will be automatically downloaded.

Although many people use an iPod to listen to a podcast and the origins of the podcast name is associated with Apple’s ubiquitous mp3 player (and, of course, the word broadcasting) you can, in fact, use any mp3 player or, indeed listen to the podcast through a computer or laptop or even your phone.

Of course, with respect to training courses it is perfectly possible for study guides and course manuals to be emailed to those signed up for the course for remote independent study. Or the same information can be made available on the training company’s website but podcasts simplify access to learning.

No computer or internet connection is required (once the initial download is done) and additional emails do not clutter up already overloaded inboxes. Instead those people subscribed to a course become part of a community who are automatically notified of each new topic as it becomes available.

In education and training, podcasts are an extremely effective way of demonstrating passion and conviction on a certain subject, because verbal communication can provide emphasis in a way that the written word cannot. It is also easier to reinforce important aspects of a subject through the more informal verbal style of communicating typically used in podcasts compared to other forms of distance learning and e-learning.

So a verbal form of providing a training course can in many ways be more beneficial than written guides and can be especially appealing to some people. Many people actually learn better when they hear a subject than when they read it in a book.

Although the term podcasting comes in part from the word broadcasting, it is technically a form of what is called narrowcasting because the listeners have subscribed to the podcast. The communication is to a small niche community whose requirements are known, rather than to a broad audience such as in the broadcast of a radio program.

So for all those busy professionals whose schedules make it difficult to find time to attend a classroom-based course, podcasts are the route to stimulating new learning and ideas in your chosen field, to enhancing your professional skills and improving your career prospects with professional training qualifications. Read the rest of this entry »