The musicians’ brains are a step ahead

The experiment involved 151 participants; approximately half had musical education, and half did not. Everyone had to learn a sequence of ten steps, relying on the images on the screen and the corresponding sounds. After a short break, the participants were shown or played another sequence, and then their memory of the first sequence was tested again.

The results turned out to be quite interesting. It turned out that musicians don’t remember things better so much as they understand which step will come next more quickly. Their advantage lies in the ability to predict the development of events in advance, rather than in having a stronger memory.

A newly learned skill is quite easy to disrupt if, immediately after training, you encounter something similar but different. Moreover, the visual channel turned out to be critical: when, after training, a person saw a different sequence of images, they recalled what they had learned noticeably worse. However, if, after a break, they were simply given other sounds to listen to, this had almost no effect on the result.

It turns out that fresh motor memory is particularly vulnerable in the perception channel that was the primary one during learning. If a person learned using pictures, it’s best not to look at similar sequences immediately after training — the brain may mix everything up.

These conclusions may be useful not only for musicians, but also for athletes and those who are recovering motor skills after injuries; it’s important to remember that training needs to be structured wisely, and the brain shouldn’t be overloaded with similar tasks immediately after learning something new.