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novapsycheStudy: Learning to Juggle Causes Changes in Brain
It's a great party trick and useful for circus performers but scientists said Wednesday that learning to juggle can cause changes in areas of the adult brain.
Mastering the skill increases the amount of gray matter in areas of the brain that process and store visual information, proving what was not thought possible -- that new stimuli can alter the brain's structure.
A comparison of brain-imaging scans of non-jugglers and other volunteers before they learned to juggle and three months later, revealed an increase in gray matter in certain areas of the newly trained jugglers' brains.
[...] In a report in the science journal Nature, May and his colleagues said brain scans done three months after the new jugglers had stopped juggling showed the increase in gray matter had been reduced.
It's a great party trick and useful for circus performers but scientists said Wednesday that learning to juggle can cause changes in areas of the adult brain.
Mastering the skill increases the amount of gray matter in areas of the brain that process and store visual information, proving what was not thought possible -- that new stimuli can alter the brain's structure.
A comparison of brain-imaging scans of non-jugglers and other volunteers before they learned to juggle and three months later, revealed an increase in gray matter in certain areas of the newly trained jugglers' brains.
[...] In a report in the science journal Nature, May and his colleagues said brain scans done three months after the new jugglers had stopped juggling showed the increase in gray matter had been reduced.