Playing the battery for many years makes the brain more efficient, a group of researchers from the Ruhr University of Bochum (Germany) have shown in a study recently published in the journal ‘Brain and Behavior’.

And, the motor coordination of people who play this instrument is “far superior” to that of other people. “Most people can only do motor tasks with one hand and have trouble playing different rhythms with both hands at the same time. However, those who play the drums can do things that are impossible for many”, experts said.

At work, 20 professional drummers who had been playing this instrument for 17 years and who practised for more than 10 hours a week were analyzed through magnetic resonances. They were all compared to 24 people who did not play this instrument.

In this way, the researchers found that the front part of the corpus callosum, a brain structure that connects the two hemispheres and is responsible for motor skills, of those who played the drums was different from those of the control group.

And, these musicians had fewer fibres but those that were thicker, which allows them to exchange information between the hemispheres more quickly. In addition, the researchers found that the thicker the fibers, the better the musician’s ability to play the drums.