full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Anita Collins: How playing an instrument benefits your brain

Unscramble the Blue Letters

How do we know that all these benefits are unique to music, as oseoppd to, say, sotprs or painting? Or could it be that people who go into music were already smarter to begin with? Neuroscientists have explored these issues, but so far, they have found that the artistic and aesthetic ascteps of learning to play a musical instrument are different from any other atiitvcy studied, including other arts. And several rzaiemondd sidetus of participants, who showed the same levels of cognitive function and neural processing at the start, found that those who were exposed to a period of music learning showed enhancement in multiple brain areas, compared to the others.

Open Cloze

How do we know that all these benefits are unique to music, as _______ to, say, ______ or painting? Or could it be that people who go into music were already smarter to begin with? Neuroscientists have explored these issues, but so far, they have found that the artistic and aesthetic _______ of learning to play a musical instrument are different from any other ________ studied, including other arts. And several __________ _______ of participants, who showed the same levels of cognitive function and neural processing at the start, found that those who were exposed to a period of music learning showed enhancement in multiple brain areas, compared to the others.

Solution

  1. activity
  2. randomized
  3. studies
  4. sports
  5. opposed
  6. aspects

Original Text

How do we know that all these benefits are unique to music, as opposed to, say, sports or painting? Or could it be that people who go into music were already smarter to begin with? Neuroscientists have explored these issues, but so far, they have found that the artistic and aesthetic aspects of learning to play a musical instrument are different from any other activity studied, including other arts. And several randomized studies of participants, who showed the same levels of cognitive function and neural processing at the start, found that those who were exposed to a period of music learning showed enhancement in multiple brain areas, compared to the others.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
playing music 4
multiple areas 2
making music 2
musical instrument 2

Important Words

  1. activity
  2. aesthetic
  3. areas
  4. artistic
  5. arts
  6. aspects
  7. benefits
  8. brain
  9. cognitive
  10. compared
  11. enhancement
  12. explored
  13. exposed
  14. function
  15. including
  16. instrument
  17. issues
  18. learning
  19. levels
  20. multiple
  21. music
  22. musical
  23. neural
  24. neuroscientists
  25. opposed
  26. painting
  27. participants
  28. people
  29. period
  30. play
  31. processing
  32. randomized
  33. showed
  34. smarter
  35. sports
  36. start
  37. studied
  38. studies
  39. unique