First, I realize that I forgot to do my list of Pros and Cons for the last Journal Club option. So here they are:
Pros:
- In the media lately, and that sort of thing tends to get a good reception
- The first author is the head of NIDA, which tends to carry some weight
Cons:
- n=10, for a human study, it’s not a BAD n, but it’s not that great either.
- The study has been interpreted as possibly more meaningful than it really is.
- Since the study does have problems, it will be harder to give a good presentation of.
And now, on to the second option. I’m not sure how many of you may remember my previous post on music and the brain, but there are lots of hypotheses out there on how music improves certain aspects of brain function. And now, for the first time, researchers actually showed that musical training can change the way the brain develops, not just in terms of eventual function, but in its very structure.
Hyde, et al. “Musical training shapes structural brain development” Journal of Neuroscience, 2009.
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