Our brain un­der­stands mu­sic not only as an ex­pres­sion of our emo­tional world. As the stud­ies of the Max-Planck-In­sti­tute in Leipzig show, mu­sic is also proc­essed in the brain cen­tres re­spon­si­ble for cog­ni­tion and speech (14).

– A musical piece is stored in the memory.
– It is differentiated into different parts which are put in order.
– Interrelations of these parts are made.
– Conclusions in regard to the holistic context are made.
– And all this is being compared with already stored musical
   experiences and insights.

In do­ing so, the brain is ac­tively stor­ing, or­der­ing, ab­stract­ing, con­clud­ing, com­par­ing, plan­ning, ex­pect­ing and learn­ing; and pre­suma­bly – so the in­di­ca­tions of the Leipzig re­search – fol­lows a mu­si­cal gram­mar, which is al­ready there when we are born.

As the Max Planck In­sti­tute in Leipzig (15) docu­mented by the help of event re­lated po­ten­tials, these cog­ni­tive per­form­ances are not only pre­sent in pro­fes­sional mu­si­cians, but also in per­sons who char­ac­ter­ise them­selves as non mu­si­cal and do not have any mu­si­cal edu­ca­tion.
What is par­ticu­larly im­por­tant is that the ac­ti­va­tion of these brain sys­tems can be docu­mented even when the per­son does not pay at­ten­tion to the mu­sic; for in­stance when the mu­sic plays in the back­ground of a video game. This means that mu­sic ac­ti­vates these sys­tems to a great de­gree in an ob­jec­tive and auto­matic way (16).

An im­por­tant find­ing of neu­ro­sci­ence is that the in­for­ma­tion ar­chi­tec­ture of our brain is, on the one hand de­ter­mined by ge­netics, but on the other hand by the ex­peri­ences we have in life. All outer ex­peri­ences are de­liv­ered by our sense or­gans via their bio­elec­tro­chemi­cal sig­nals – these sig­nals have a share in in­ter­con­nect­ing the nerve cells and, thus, in or­gan­is­ing the in­for­ma­tion ar­chi­tec­ture of our brain.

When a child is born, it is ge­neti­cally equip­ped with cer­tain quali­ties of char­ac­ter and cer­tain tal­ents. But in how far these will de­velop in him, and will be con­stantly rep­re­sented in his net­work of brain cells, de­pends es­sen­tially upon how far these quali­ties are stimu­lated by outer and inner experiences.

A good example for this can be seen in the investigation results with children who were born deaf or with severe hearing impairments.

Do children, who are born with a significantly reduced hearing ability, show deficits in their development compared to children without hearing disorders?

four clear deficits (17 18) could be found:

– deficits in motorics: especially in the co-ordination
   of movements and in fine motorics
– deficits in the development of language
– deficits in the ability of abstraction
– retardation in emotional maturation