Multisensory Integration during Short-term Music Reading Training Enhances Both Uni- and Multisensory Cortical Processing

Abstract

The human ability to integrate the input of several sensory systems is essential for building a meaningful interpretation out of the complexity of the environment. Training studies have shown that the involvement of multiple senses during training enhances neuroplasticity, but it is not clear to what extent integration of the senses during training is required for the observed effects. This study intended to elucidate the differential contributions of uni- and multisensory elements of music reading training in the resulting plasticity of abstract audiovisual incongruency identification. We used magnetoencephalography to measure the pre- and posttraining cortical responses of two randomly assigned groups of participants that followed either an audiovisual music reading training that required multisensory integration (AV-Int group) or a unisensory training that had separate auditory and visual elements (AV-Sep group). Results revealed a network of frontal generators for the abstract audiovisual incongruency response, confirming previous findings, and indicated the central role of anterior prefrontal cortex in this process. Differential neuroplastic effects of the two types of training in frontal and temporal regions point to the crucial role of multisensory integration occurring during training. Moreover, a comparison of the posttraining cortical responses of both groups to a group of musicians that were tested using the same paradigm revealed that long-term music training leads to significantly greater responses than the short-term training of the AV-Int group in anterior prefrontal regions as well as to significantly greater responses than both short-term training protocols in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG).

Musical expertise is related to altered functional connectivity during audiovisual integration

“…The organization of this network indicates that musicians make greater use of the temporal sources (and auditory information accordingly). The present results closely relate to previous results reported by our group (9,10). This analysis further revealed that musicians showed significantly greater activity than nonmusicians in superior frontal, superior temporal, and lingual gyrus when confronted with incongruences.…”

“…A new dataset was created for the present study from MEG measurements that have been presented in two previous publications (9,10). In the new dataset, we included the same number of musicians and nonmusicians for whom MRI data were available.…”

“…This response was located in frontotemporal cortical areas. Plasticity effects related to long-term musical training were investigated in this cross-sectional study by comparison of musicians and nonmusicians, whereas effects of short-term music reading training were investigated in a follow-up longitudinal study that allowed causal inference of the neuroplastic effects (10).…”

Atypical multisensory integration in Niemann-Pick type C disease – towards potential biomarkers

“…The landscape is actually quite promising in this regard since several studies now point to multisensory and unisensory gain with repeated training. These studies show that training can lead to improvement in MSI-dependent tasks such as speech-perception [53], that training can narrow the time window during which two sensory inputs are seen as “synchronous” and thus integrated [54], and that MSI networks can be engaged and enhanced in training activities where abstract stimuli are paired, such as specific sounds with abstract shapes, or musical tones with symbols [55,56]. Work in animal models also supports the notion that sensory integration abilities can be impacted through practice with training-induced multisensory enhancement noted in both behavior and activity patterns at the single cell level in the superior colliculus, in both juvenile [57] and adult cats [58].…”

Causal inference and temporal predictions in audiovisual perception of speech and music

“…Several electrophysiological studies have demonstrated that musicians as compared with nonmusicians exhibit different scalp topography and functional connectivity for oddball detection using audiovisual symbolic music stimuli, and this generalizes to audio–tactile stimulation . As shown in a series of MEG studies, this sensitivity to audiovisual incongruencies can also be learned via short‐term perceptual training (Table ).…”