Playing a musical instrument can change your brain in magnificent ways that can help you in other aspects of your life, even if they seem unrelated. Scientists are studying different aspects in which playing the guitar changes the brain and they came up with some pretty interesting facts about musicians.
Furthermore, guitar players are considered more attractive than other musicians and are also some of the best composers in the music industry, along with piano players. The guitar is present in almost every song that we hear on the radio and it is a very melodious instrument.
Playing the guitar lowers your anxiety levels
Researchers have concluded that learning how to play the guitar can raise your concentration levels. That’s because you have to pay attention to the strings and the notes for a relatively long period of time without losing your focus.
This also has a good impact on your stress levels because, just like in meditation, focusing your mind on a single activity for at least 30 minutes leaves your worrying thoughts behind.
The mind is programmed to focus on danger and thoughts about possible threatening events can be present in your mind without you even realizing it, that is why you may be anxious all the time. So focusing your attention on playing the guitar is a good strategy to leave worries behind.
How your brain can benefit from it
The functional MRI is a great invention that has helped neuroscientists discover how the brain functions during different activities that we engage in. While researching what happens to your brain while playing a musical instrument, in this case, the guitar, researchers concluded that a 1-hour guitar session is equal to 1 hour of physical exercise.
Every part of the brain is lightened up in the images. The reason behind it might be that, while playing the guitar, the visual part of the brain, as well as the hearing part and the motor part of the brain, have to work at the same time.
There is a region of your brain that is called the corpus callosum that has the role to connect the two hemispheres of the brain. As long as both hemispheres work together at the same time, the brain forms new neural connections that go through the corpus callosum and make it stronger.
This results in a quicker way of making connections in the brain even when you are not playing the guitar, helping you make quicker decisions and have quicker thinking patterns that help you solve everyday problems in a much easier way.
Playing a musical instrument also helps you store memory in a more effective manner that helps you access memories through different cues, like auditory ones.
Conclusions
Learning how to play the guitar is not easy. It might take you years until you can become a master, but the ways it can benefit your brain are numerous. The sounds a guitar makes are beautiful and you can play almost any melody you like.
You can add some fun to it and learn different techniques, like tapping, stripping or using guitar capos. You can find out everything you need to know about guitar capos in this guide from Sound-unsound.com.
You can even form a band if you have friends who also play some kind of instrument and take part in band contests or have concerts for your friends. Starting to compose your own songs is an even more challenging task that will pump up your brain as well as your soul. It’s never too late to get creative and become a good guitar player.
