Hey, do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, man!

You might also want to switch on your alpha-synuclein gene, and throw in a dual-specificity phosphatase or two. Because a new study finds that these and other genes are activated when professional musicians strut their stuff. The findings are in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. [Chakravarthi Kanduri et al, The effect of music performance on the transcriptome of professional musicians]

Mastering an instrument is no easy feat. It requires timing, coordination, emotional interpretation and an ability to integrate information that comes in through the ears, the eyes and the fingers. But what gives rise to musical ability, biologically speaking?
 
To find out, researchers took blood samples from 10 professional musicians before and after they played a selection of pieces by Stravinsky, Haydn, Mozart, and Bach. And they identified all of the genes that were turned on during the performance—that is, those genes that actually got transcribed into RNAs that could be used to make proteins.
 
What they saw was a boost in the activity of genes involved in neural growth and flexibility, which could account for musicians’ brains being good at forging new connections. Genes involved in motor control were also revved up, as were those that light up the brain’s pleasure center.
 
Perhaps not surprisingly, versions of about a third of these musically important genes are known to also be active in songbirds—another creature whose livelihood depends on using musical talent to wow an audience.
 
—Karen Hopkin
 
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
 
[Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.]