Playing a musical instrument boosts brain blood flow

For musicians, playing a musical instrument appears to increase blood flow velocity in the middle cerebral artery (MCAv), a recent study has found.

Researchers enrolled 13 musicians who were asked to play three pieces of music using a piano or a violin. Pieces were of different levels of difficulty: the first was played for the first time (FS), another was a piece they were already practicing (PR), and the final was one that the participants had mastered (MS). Doppler ultrasound was used to measure blood flow velocity across different parts of the brain.

Before playing the FS, PR, and MS musical pieces, resting mean blood pressure values were 86, 88, and 85 mm Hg, with no significant difference observed. During the FS (90 mm Hg) and PR (89 mm Hg) trials, however, blood pressure significantly increased. No such effect was reported for the MS piece.

A similar effect was reported for MCAv, with resting values that did not differ irrespective of the difficulty of the musical piece that was about to be played (0.54 vs 0.53 vs 0.52 m/s before the FS, MS, and PR trials, respectively).

Of note, MCAv increased significantly when musicians were playing the MS and PR pieces, rising to values of 0.55 and 0.56 m/s, respectively. These corresponded to an 8.6-percent and 5.2-percent increase in MCAv while playing music. This was not observed in the FS trial.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to find a clear impact of playing a musical instrument on cerebral blood flow,” the researchers said.

“A limitation for this study is that playing violin and piano are different in motor commitment. Further investigation using a larger sample size solely in violin is needed for a more definitive clarification,” they added.