Music Makes the World Go Round: The Impact of Musical Training on Non-musical Cognitive Functions—A Review

Abstract

Musical training is becoming increasingly popular as a topic for scientific research. Here we review the available studies investigating whether and to which degree musical experience generalizes to cognitive functions unrelated to music abilities in healthy humans. In general, it seems that musical training is associated with enhancing effects, even if sometimes only restricted to the auditory domain, on various cognitive functions spanning from executive control to creativity. We conclude that musical engagement may be a useful cognitive training to promote cognitive enhancement, but more research using longitudinal studies and taking into account individual differences is necessary to determine actual benefits.

Got Rhythm? Better Inhibitory Control Is Linked with More Consistent Drumming and Enhanced Neural Tracking of the Musical Beat in Adult Percussionists and Nonpercussionists

“…These outcomes suggest that there may be an overlap between brain networks involved in musical rhythm and cognitive control and provide a basis for further investigation of the potential for rhythm-based training to strengthen cognitive function. Although correlational studies cannot establish a causal relationship between music training and inhibitory control, converging evidence has demonstrated enhanced cognitive and perceptual function in musicians (see Benz, Sellaro, Hommel, & Colzato, 2015, for a recent review). Percussionists outperformed nonpercussionists in all of our measures of interest; however, our regression analyses suggest the results are not solely driven by group differences, because drumming consistency and the neural index of beat alignment each explain unique variance in inhibitory control, above and beyond group membership and demographic factors (age, sex, and IQ).…”

Lost in translation? Neuroscientific research, advocacy, and the claimed transfer benefits of musical practice

“…These domains include general cognitive benefits (including language benefits as a major sub-field), auditory processing benefits, motor control benefits, social benefits, and health benefits. The general cognitive benefits mentioned as arising from musical engagement are: general reasoning skills (Miendlarzewska and Trost 2014); academic achievement (Dawson 2011); intelligence (Benz et al 2016;Levitin 2013); cognitive ability (Kraus and Chandrasekaran 2010); numeracy and spatial cognition (Levitin 2013); cognitive control (Dawson 2011), processing speed (Benz et al 2016); temporal processing skills (Miendlarzewska and Trost 2014); verbal memory (Benz et al 2016;Dawson 2011;Levitin 2013); working memory performance (Kraus and Chandrasekaran 2010); executive control over attention (Putkinen et al 2015); and visual attention (Benz et al 2016). It is also suggested that life-long musical training may delay or reverse age-related cognitive decline (Benz et al 2016).…”

“…The suggested benefits of musical engagement for linguistic development include: improved language processing and language-learning ability (Dawson 2011); improved vocabulary, greater reading ability, and stronger neural activation to pitch patterns in native language (Kraus and Chandrasekaran 2010); more accurate brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch patterns in an unfamiliar tonal language (Kraus and Slater 2015); improved phonological awareness and spelling performance in dyslexic children, and better speech segmentation (François et al 2013); and improved phonemic awareness (Benz et al 2016).…”

“…There are a number of research groups pursuing this approach, although more research of this kind is needed (Benz et al 2016). When longitudinal research is not possible, researchers use control groups, however, the control groups in brain imaging studies are often not carefully selected (Benz et al 2016), there are no control groups at all (François et al 2013), or the control conditions do not allow for comparison with the experimental group (Gordon, Fehd, and McCandliss 2015;Levitin 2013). In addition, many studies make use of very small samples due to the complexity of the research procedures (François et al 2013).…”

Music in learning and relearning: The life-span approach.

“…With regard general cognitive processes (attention, working memory, and executive functions), there are plenty of positive findings of music training to enhance these higher-order functions as well (Benz et al 2016). However, these effects are quite sensitive to the testing paradigms and thus more research on this domain is needed (see critical review by Jaschke, Eggermont, Honing, & Scherder, 2013).…”