{"id":13608,"date":"2015-03-03T15:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-03-03T23:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=13608"},"modified":"2017-04-25T04:07:10","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T11:07:10","slug":"the-elastic-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/the-elastic-brain","title":{"rendered":"The elastic brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Read more articles by Rebecca Boyle\" href=\"http:\/\/aeon.co\/magazine\/author\/rebecca-boyle\/\">Rebecca Boyle<\/a> \u2014 aeon<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"irc_mi\" src=\"\" alt=\"\" width=\"719\" height=\"450\" \/><br \/> Five years ago, in a new city and in search of a new hobby, I decided to try playing a musical instrument for the first time. I had never learned to read music; in my grade school, the optional orchestra class was offered at the same time as the optional robotics class, and I chose the latter. Understanding nothing about chords or music theory, I settled on the relatively simple mountain dulcimer, a three-stringed lap instrument from Appalachia.<\/p>\n<p>I was proud of how quickly I picked it up. I could replicate many of the old-time fiddle tunes, Civil War ballads and Ozark folk songs my instructor played during demonstrations, and I learned to discern notes by ear. I was hardly a virtuoso, however, and after a few months I hit a plateau. I could hear how they were supposed to sound, but challenging, faster-tempo songs remained out of my grasp. Frustrated, I distinctly remember thinking: \u2018If only I\u2019d learned music as a kid, I might have been great at this.\u2019<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/aeon.co\/magazine\/psychology\/can-i-make-my-brain-as-plastic-as-a-childs\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rebecca Boyle \u2014 aeon Five years ago, in a new city and in search of a new hobby, I decided to try playing a musical instrument for the first time. I had never learned to read music; in my grade school, the optional orchestra class was offered at the same time as the optional robotics [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46597,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608\/revisions\/46597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}