Boy, am I lucky I slaved away at the piano as a kid, when I see this:
Now. Honestly. I never did amount to much, on the piano, even though I played it for like… 10-12 years or something. I just never managed to get fluent somehow, always having to struggle with learning the music from the sheet music.
I do sing a lot though, and have done, almost since the same time I started playing the piano. Possibly not the same thing, brain-wise, but still great fun and being a part of a choir is a super duper health boost!
And you know what? I promised myself I’d learn to play the guitar this year, and am strumming along, having learned a handful of chords. Now busy at trying to learn to progress between the chords in a fairly quick manner so I can play rhythmically.
Still a long ways to go though. But yeah, I can definitely see how (and why) playing an instrument will be like fireworks in the brain, in the very best sense of the word fireworks, at that. Can you?