Question: does playing the piano really help your brain

Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes answered on 16 Mar 2015:

Playing the piano will make certain parts of your brain active. In the long term, this activation will change your brain activity in such a way that your piano playing improves. A colleague of mine recently found out that the part of your brain called the ‘premotor cortex’ encodes the timing (rhythm) of the song and the movement of your finger separately, while another part of your brain, called the ‘primary motor area’, encodes for the combination of timing and finger movement. So different parts of the brain have different roles in controlling piano playing.