25 September 2025, 09:00
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Alamy
Two Harvard neuroscientists showed that musicians have an extra ‘bump’ on the brain, on an area associated with movement of the fingers.
A recent social media video from neuroscientists and science communicators Dr Ben Rein and David Eagleman explains the discovery that musicians whose playing involves intricate finger movements, including pianists, have extra ‘bumps’ on their brains.
But why did the video have string players up in arms?
Since the development of MRI and other types of scans that enable scientists to study the brains of living subjects, there’s been a huge amount of research into music and the brain.
We’re fascinated by what happens in our brains when we listen to or perform music, how music influences our emotions, and the great nature vs nurture debate: are some people born with brain features that make them more likely to become musicians, or do those features develop because they dedicate hours and years of their lives to learning and practising an instrument?
Read more: See INSIDE a pianist’s brain live with this groundbreaking new technology
This particular piece of research, by Harvard neuroscientists Marc Bangert and Gottfried Schlaug, showed that musicians have an extra ‘bump’ or fold, clearly visible on a scan, on a part of the brain called the motor cortex. It’s called an Omega Sign, because it looks a bit like the Greek letter Omega, and it’s on the area of the motor cortex associated with movement of the fingers.
Bangert and Schlaug’s research found that the Omega Sign was more pronounced in professional musicians, who practised for many hours a day, than amateur musicians who played for around one hour a day.
Taken together with other research that shows changes in the brain associated with learning new skills, this suggests that it develops with practice – nurture, rather than nature.
Bangert and Schlaug also found that in the brains of pianists, the Omega Sign was visible on both sides of the brain. But in the brains of violinists, the Omega Sign was only visible on the right hemisphere, which controls the movement of the left hand.
David Eagleman explains in the video that this is because “their left fingers are doing all this work, and they’re just bowing with their other hand”.
And that’s the point that had string players scrabbling for the ‘comment’ button with whichever hand they could move fastest. A comment from Hilary Hahn, one of the world’s top violinists, summed up their feelings succinctly: “‘Just bowing’ hahahahahaha.”
There’s no denying that string players need to master very detailed and nuanced movements with their right hand, to control the angle, weight and speed of the bow on the strings, not to mention techniques like spiccato (where the bow bounces on the string) or tremolo (where a note is repeated as fast as possible to make a trembling sound).
But it seems that it’s only the bigger movements of the fingers of their left hand that are giving them ‘bumps’ on the brain., one of the world’s top violinists, summed up their feelings succinctly: “‘Just bowing’ hahahahahaha