Last Updated : Monday , 5 November 2007 , 00 : 19 GMT Brain ' closes eyes ' to hear music Training may have changed the way a conductor ' s brain worksOur brains can turn down our ability to see to help them listen even harder to music and complex sounds , say experts . A US study of 20 non - musicians and 20 musical conductors found both groups diverted brain activity away from visual areas during listening tasks . Scans showed activity fell in these areas as it rose in auditory ones . But during harder tasks the changes were less marked for conductors than for non - musicians , researchers told a Society for Neuroscience conference . Imagine the difference between listening to someone talk in a quiet room , and that same discussion in a noisy room - you don ' t see as much of what ' s going on in the noisy room Dr Jonathan Burdette Wake Forest University Baptist Medical CenterThe researchers , from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and the University of North Carolina , used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging , which can measure real - time changes in brain activity based on the blood flow to different areas of the brain . Previous research has identified various parts of the brain involved in vision and hearing . The experiment involved 20 professional orchestral conductors or band leaders and 20 musically untrained students , all aged between 28 and 40 . While lying in the scanner , they were asked to listen to two different musical tones played a few thousandths of a second apart and identify which was played first . The task was made harder for the professional musicians than for the non - musicians , to allow for the differences in their background . What the scientists found was that while activity rose , as expected , in the auditory part of the brain , it correspondingly fell in the visual part . As the task was made harder and harder , the non - musicians carried on diverting more and more activity away from the visual parts of the brain to the auditory side , as they struggled to concentrate . However , after a certain point , the conductors did not suppress their brains , suggesting that their years of training had provided a distinct advantage in the way their brains were organised . Finely - tuned brains Dr Jonathan Burdette , who led the study , said : " This is like closing your eyes to listen to music . " Imagine the difference between listening to someone talk in a quiet room and that same discussion in a noisy room - you don ' t see as much of what ' s going on in the noisy room . " Another researcher , Dr David Hairston , said that the study showed just how flexible this ability was . " How this operates can change with highly specialised training and experience , " he said . Dr Bahador Bahrami , from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience , said the study showed the difference in " brain organisation " between musicians and non - musicians . " It demonstrates the mechanisms developed in the brain in the face of distraction . The brains of the conductors are highly tuned to tones . "