Mental Health

For Certain Brains, Practice Makes Perfect

By Christine Hsu | Update Date: Jul 28, 2015 11:43 PM EDT

Your brain determines if practice will make perfect, according to a new study.

Researchers said new findings suggest that there's significantly more to learning than the ancient "practice makes perfect" proverb.

Researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital recently linked certain brain regions to individual talent.

The latest study involved 15 young adults with no musical background who underwent six weeks of musical training. Participants underwent brain imaging tests before and after their six weeks of musical training.

Study results revealed that the activity in a group of brain structures measured before the training session before the musical training predicted which participants would learn quickly or slowly.

"Predisposition plays an important role for auditory-motor learning that can be clearly distinguished from training-induced plasticity," lead researcher Dr. Robert Zatorre, a cognitive neuroscientist at The Neuro who co-directs Montreal's International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS), said in a news release. "Our findings pertain to the debate about the relative influence of 'nature or nurture,' but also have potential practical relevance for medicine and education."

The findings were published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

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