Drumming for Plasticity

From Neuroscience for Kids

What is brain plasticity? Does it mean that our brains are made of plastic? Of course not. Plasticity, or neuroplasticity, is the lifelong ability of the brain to reorganize neural pathways based on new experiences.

We've all met people who do appear to have a brain made of plastic. Another explanation might be that there are some people who never have new experiences. As an aging person, I see it as my job and responsibility to have regular new experiences so that my neural pathways will keep reorganizing indefinitely. Learning a new language is supposed to be excellent for this purpose, but would require way too much reorganizing, I think. Taking drumming lessons is a lot more fun. 

I got enamored with drumming by chance. A drumming teacher brought drums to a meeting that had nothing to do with music or drumming, and gave us a lesson for free. Before learning anything more about drumming, I bought my first drum, an African djembe.

Group drumming classes vacillate between exhilarating and terrifying. When your hands have found the pattern, you can drum yourself into a happy trance. Your mind has to grasp the pattern first, but it must quickly become mindless because you must play faster than you can think. Should you get stuck in thinking, you're toast. In some classes, I do well and feel like a star, or maybe I just feel like a real musician. On a bad night, my confidence evaporates. My brain turns to plastic. 

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/plast.html