Visual/Aural Separation
The BBC have an article up about some new research examining how the brain diverts attention away from the visual analysis areas when you are concentrating on solving an auditory problem. Particularly of interest was that conductors “switch over” to a lesser degree then non-musicians, when faced with more difficult auditory problems.
This doesn’t seem terribly surprising, given that the job of a conductor requires an excellent balance of visual and aural analysis, but then that was probably the point in choosing them as a group for the research. You want to see something with a strong correlation. It would be interesting to see if a not so explicitly qualified group are as good at maintaining mental balance. I wonder if musicians are better or worse then the conductors.
One of the researchers is quoted as pointing out that this is related to closing your eyes when you listen to music. When I do that it does almost feel as if I am seeing the music. Well, not exactly seeing it, some sort of brain activity related to seeing but a bit further up the nervous system chain. It’s a vague kind of visual recognition. Kind of.
It’s a bit like GPGPU, which is where the graphics card in a PC is used as a general computing unit to solve, for example, protein folding problems. In both cases, something designed for a visual task is being used for a different problem. I wonder though if in the brain case it really is an odd crossover, or if the visual part always is playing a role when listening to music. Perhaps one of the differences between sound and music is the extent to which the other sensory parts of the brain contribute.
Oh glorious speculation!