Hints at what intensive musical training might do to the brain

The Society for Neuroscience’s annual conference was held last week in San Diego and three abstracts were presented on the measurable effects of musical training on brain anatomy and function.

The first, authored by Julie Roy of the University of Montreal, reported improved sensory integration abilities in highly-trained musicians. The study expanded beyond the typically studied modalities of sight and sound to include the integration of tactile and auditory information. The experiments used simultaneous presentation of a stimulus in each modality and found non-musically trained individuals have difficulty segregating the stimuli and perceive tactile illusions. In contrast, the musicians appeared to have better multi-sensory segregation abilities and were less likely to experience such illusions.

Second, Yunxin Wang of Bejing Normal University, reported not just anatomical changes due to musical training but also a critical developmental window in which intensive musical training has the biggest impact. The group employed MRI to measure grey matter volume, surface area and the folding index of 48 subjects with varying degrees of musical training at different ages. They suggest that training before the age of seven was correlated with a thicker right caudal anterior cingulate cortex, larger volume right lingual gyrus and a smaller volume in the right lateral occipital region. This suggests a role for music in shaping the cortex but such studies are difficult to control fully for, given that musical training before this age may also correlate with, for example, higher socioeconomic class.

Finally, Ana Pinho and colleagues examined a correlation between expertise in musical improvisation and higher frontal lobe connectivity. They also report a negative correlation between activity measured with fMRI in these forebrain regions during improvisation and proficiency in the task. They suggest this may reflect a degree of automation in what is considered a highly creative act.

Read more at: http://www.sfn.org/annual-meeting/neuroscience-2013