Keep the mind nimble, they say, learn a new skill, play an instrument ... and I might have said the same before reading this latest bit of neuroscience out of the University of Hamburg. I've often prescribed musicianship as a brain tonic, knowing but maybe neglecting to articulate how simply playing that instrument (be it french horns or juggling balls) is not really the whole story.

So let me amend that: Yes, the learning is good for you, good for keeping your neurophysique in shape, dramatic and quick to show in the scans as A+ good for you, but it isn't the playing so much as the learning curve that does the neuroplastic magic ... as soon as you stop learning, the ol' gray matter slips right back to that same old used-to-be:

"learning to juggle can alter gray matter in the occipito-temporal cortex as early as after 7 days of training. Neither performance nor exercise alone could explain these changes.

[ HOWEVER ... ]

We suggest that the qualitative change (i.e. learning of a new task) is more critical for the brain to change its structure than continued training of an already-learned task.
[ Changes in Gray Matter Induced by Learning - Revisited ]

Put another way, "... learning something new but simple like juggling doesn’t really do much for you. Instead, you have to keep going. Evolve your changes, take them a step further, go somewhere ..." ( cf Neuroplasticity, emphasis is mine) All of which may or may not relate to yesterday's post about 'smoothish' jazz, I don't know, but what it does tell us is just how far advanced of our Science was the 50 years old Do-The-Impossible outer spaceways tone science philosophy of Sun Ra.