As an amateur musician who plays electric violin, I love the continuing stream of research from neuroscience that shows how important it is to use all of our brain and all of our many intelligences.

It is also fascinating to me that the part of the brain involved the brain stem, the so-called “primitive” part of the brain responsible for controlling automatic things like our breathing and heartbeat.

What’s clear is that we owe it to our children, our grandchildren and to ourselves to create, manifest and live in learning environments that are rich, complex, and novel. This means challenging ourselves to learn to do new things.

The researcher emphasized that the results were seen “in more or less everyday people. You don’t have to be a top musician to find these kinds of effects.”

So let’s move beyond the limitations we place on ourselves and learn something new, like facing the challenge of of blank piece of paper or finding “our” musical instrument.

Who knows part of the brain will be involved. For most of us, who cares.

Dr. Rohn