Like a lot of people when they were children, I took piano lessons while I was in grade school. Your parents probably forced you into playing the piano or an instrument of some kind and you looked forward to quitting if and when they allowed you to. I can attest that learning this instrument, or any instrument, can be frustrating at times. It takes time to become proficient at anything worthwhile, but once I began to play better and know some songs people would recognize, I found it enjoyable to sit down at the piano.

It turns out there are more benefits to learning how to play an instrument well than just being the next Piano Man at a party or serenading some lovely ladies. The functioning and plasticity of your brain (the ability of it to change and grow) can be enhanced by engaging in disciplined musical training.

According to the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, increasing research in neuroscience highlights the beneficial effects that musical study has on brain development. To be a musician means to be proficient in auditory and visual perception, pattern recognition and memory. These skills make cognitive demands that breach across several sensory systems in the mind, which can give scientists a great opportunity to study brain-behavior and change over time. Recent neuro-imaging has shown that the brains of highly trained musicians, as compared to those of non-musicians, have structural differences, most notably in the form of increased gray matter volume. The skills also learned during musical training further develop the areas in the brain responsible for independent motor movements and auditory differentiation. The brains of well-trained musicians have their motor and multi-sensory systems cooperate together on a higher level than those of non-musicians.

Several studies link musical skill with academic success, but serious musical training can also correlate with success in other fields. Take Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. Secretary of State, for example, who was trained to be a concert pianist; or comedian and playwright Woody Allen who took clarinet lessons for many years; or hedge fund billionaire Bruce Kovner, a pianist who took classes at Juilliard. It’s creative thinking and the ability to listen that are strengthened through the discipline of intense musical study, which gives musicians greater capacity for thought processing and more imaginative minds. New ways of thinking, communicating and problem solving are cultivated by musical minds.

People can certainly be successful without a musical background, but success in the real world and musical study go hand in hand. What music does, according to Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, is reinforce your confidence in the ability to create. Music is a creative impulse meant to express emotion. Musicians push themselves to look beyond what already exists to discover something new. This opens up the mind to conceive of numerous possibilities in the real world, which leads to a strong creative intelligence.

Much more can be said about how musical study cultivates the mind and can help someone be successful in the world, but this brief overview should give you a good idea of how influential musical training can be. Being able to study, understand and perform music is a skill set that is bound to benefit anyone who is willing to engage with it and be persistent. Music expands and strengthens the cognitive functions of the brain and this, in turn, can translate into providing the tools for success in the real world. Music has the ability to make human life more beautiful and enriching, and when these abilities are actualized, humanity feels fulfilled and alive.