Just as we always suspected: Musician’s brains are different.

That’s the upshot of a study conducted recently at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. After comparing detailed brain scans of 30 musicians and 30 non-musicians, scientists found the musicians to have a relatively enlarged structure on the left side of the brain. The area in question is called the planum temporale, or PT, and is associated with the processing of sound. For musicians with perfect pitch, the size difference between right and left-side PT was particularly pronounced. The study’s author states it is likely that exposure to music and musical training at an early age can promote perfect pitch, given the right brain structure.

Also, some animal studies have shown the brain to be malleable, with certain parts capable of growing or shrinking in response to early outside influences.

The highly publicized music and the brain studies The National Association of Music Merchants has underwritten at the University of California-Irvine are certainly good news for the music establishment and the industry. After all, they indicate that listening to and performing music can abet very young children by improving their spatial reasoning skills.

Finally, there is scientific data supporting the notion that “music is good for you”!