Effects of music on the brain We know from episodic experience and personal observations that sometimes high music aptitude goes along with other aptitudes, but that is not consistent. Research studies, however, have demonstrated significant cerebral effects of enriched versus impoverished environmental experience (Kempermann et al. 1997; Martinez & Kesner 1998). Generally, one can state that music actually has a strong effect on the brain in manifold ways. But that does not automatically include a constant correlation with other intellectual or behavioural abilities. It has been proved that the corpus callosum is stronger in musicians compared with non-musicians (Schlaug et al. 1995 a). Musicians with perfect pitch develop a larger left planum temporale where local processing takes place (Schlaug et al 1995 b). In general, highly trained musicians exhibit an enlarged tonotopic map (Pantev et al. 1998). Furthermore, string players develop an increased cortical representation of the fingers of their left hand (Elbert et al. 1995). With respect to learning in general, just recently neuroscientists from Geneva university demonstrated a new physical phenomenon on electron microscope images. Researchers have long believed that learning correlates with synaptic connections. Neuroelectric and neurochemical changes were seen as causing that change. Now, a physiological change was found for the first time: when neurons produce a long-term-potential, which triggers a duplication of the active synapse. In 20% of those neurons researchers found double spines (Barinaga 1999). Finally, a recent study documents that temporal patterns of activity recorded over particular brain regions track the pitch contour of a melodic tone sequence. The synchronisation between the left posterior hemisphere and the rest of the brain is best when sequences have melody-like statistical properties (Patel & Balaban 2000). All of these findings confirm a relevant impact of music and music learning on the brain. Beyond that, the large body of research on patients with brain disorders (especially with Alzheimer's disease and Williams syndrome) documents that music has a very special therapeutic effect on the behaviour of those patients. Furthermore, Williams syndrome patients reveal a very strong affinity to music and achieve in music conservation tasks whereas she fail cognitive conservation tasks.