{"id":587,"date":"2017-08-18T03:22:13","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T03:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healingmusicenterprises.com\/brain_blog\/?p=587"},"modified":"2017-10-30T01:31:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T01:31:43","slug":"brain-musical-prodigy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healingmusicenterprises.com\/brain_blog\/2017\/08\/brain-musical-prodigy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brain of a Musical Prodigy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Have you ever wondered about the Brain of a musical prodigy? \u00a0I know that I have! \u00a0Prodigies of all kinds can be born to people who have no apparent similar talent or ability, but usually they recognize that their child can do some amazing things from a very young age. \u00a0 I was not a prodigy. \u00a0I did love music from an early age, and went to the piano by age 3, trying to pick out tunes that I knew. \u00a0But now that I’ve read about true musical prodigies, I know that I was a curious, music-loving child, but not a prodigy.<\/p>\n

So what exactly happens in the brain of a musical prodigy that makes them able to play instruments really, really well? \u00a0According to Psychology Today,<\/p>\n

“At age 6, Mozart performed at the court of the Prince-elect Maximilian II of Bavaria. At age 8, Joy Foster represented Jamaica in table tennis at the Caribbean championships in Trinidad. What do the brains of these two child prodigies have in common? Not as much as you might think:\u00a0a study published this week<\/a>\u00a0in the journal\u00a0Intelligence<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>shows that one size\u00a0brain<\/a>\u00a0does not fit all prodigies\u2014the brains of math prodigies are different than those of art prodigies are different than those of music prodigies. But for every prodigy, there’s a profile: distinct brain abilities help to make astounding performance possible.”<\/p>\n

I find this really interesting. \u00a0So, different brain configurations produce different kinds of unusual abilities!<\/p>\n

Ellen Winner<\/a>, a psychology professor at Boston College who has studied prodigies, tells NPR’s David Greene.<\/p>\n

“People are fascinated by these children because they don’t understand where it came from. You will see parents who say, ‘I wasn’t like this; my husband wasn’t like this.’ It seems to sometimes just come out of the blue,” Winner says.<\/p>\n