There have been a number of imaging studies looking at the brain activation patterns of musicians as they listen to music, and comparing it with those of non-musicians (my article on music and language has links to some of these). Much of the interest of these studies is the light it sheds on the nature of expertise - how are experts' brains different to those of novices. A new study has looked at how quickly these changes can start to occur.
It appears from recent brain imaging studies that in professional musicians, music activates areas of the brain that process movement; silently tapping out musical phrases evokes brain activity in areas involved in hearing. In this latest study, novice musicians were given 10 sessions of 20-minute training on the piano over five weeks. It was found that the connection between hearing music and activation in the motor region of the brain started to form very quickly - on the first session.
I'm not sure this tells us a great deal about expertise - although it does perhaps support my view that expertise, of course!, starts the moment you begin to make connections (think of expertise as a continuum, with novice at one end and expert at the other; you move from novice to expert by developing your understanding and knowledge - which you do by building connections - expertise is a matter of both far-reaching, and densely woven, connections). However, to me at any rate, this study speaks more loudly of the intrinsic connection between music and movement - displayed most dramatically in dance - and taking us back to the suggestion that music was important in human evolution, in helping social groups bond.