Musical Training as a Framework for Brain Plasticity: Behavior, Function, and Structure

Abstract

Musical training has emerged as a useful framework for the investigation of training-related plasticity in the human brain. Learning to play an instrument is a highly complex task that involves the interaction of several modalities and higher-order cognitive functions and that results in behavioral, structural, and functional changes on time scales ranging from days to years. While early work focused on comparison of musical experts and novices, more recently an increasing number of controlled training studies provide clear experimental evidence for training effects. Here, we review research investigating brain plasticity induced by musical training, highlight common patterns and possible underlying mechanisms of such plasticity, and integrate these studies with findings and models for mechanisms of plasticity in other domains.

Generality and specificity in the effects of musical expertise on perception and cognition

“…Moreover, the different demands faced by instrumentalist groups provide a testing ground to explore how finely honed auditory perception and top-down skills such as auditory attention might interact. Distinct instrumentalist groups with similar training extents also offer a way to control for differences in self-selection, motivation, or personality that can vary between musicians and non-musicians (see Herholz & Zatorre, 2012;Schellenberg, 2004;Corrigall et al, 2013).…”

“…Moreover, the different demands faced by instrumentalist groups provide a testing ground to explore how finely honed auditory perception and top-down skills such as auditory attention might interact. Distinct instrumentalist groups with similar training extents also offer a way to control for differences in self-selection, motivation, or personality that can vary between GENERALITY AND SPECIFICITY IN MUSICAL EXPERTISE EFFECTS 5 musicians and non-musicians (see Herholz & Zatorre, 2012;Schellenberg, 2004;Corrigall et al, 2013).Indeed, perceptual and cognitive outcomes associated with musical expertise have been studied extensively (see Kraus & Chandrasekaran, 2010, for review); yet many studies have examined perceptual and cognitive skills separately, with relatively small and/or heterogeneously trained samples. This is partly due to the difficulties of researching expert musician cohorts (e.g., recruitment, study time constraints, etc.)…”

Differential Adaptation of Descending Motor Tracts in Musicians

“…Musicians are an ideal population to investigate the neuroanatomical underpinnings of exceptional sensorimotor skills (Schlaug 2001;Munte et al 2002;Hyde et al 2009;Herholz and Zatorre 2012;Luo et al 2012). Some researchers have shown specialized anatomical and functional features within musician groups (Elbert et al 1995;Bangert and Schlaug 2006), which have been used to support the interpretation that specialized long-term skill training of particular instruments can lead to instrumentspecific adaptations (Stewart 2008).…”

The effects of musical training on movement pre-programming and re-programming abilities: An event-related potential investigation

“…musician and non-musicians (for a review, see Wan & Schlaug, 2010), particularly within the motor network (Herholz & Zatorre, 2012). Indeed, neuroimaging studies indicate that professional musicians exhibit larger grey matter volume in the primary motor cortex (Amunts et al, 1997;Gaser & Schlaug, 2003;Elbert et al, 1995) and cerebellum (Hutchinson et al, 2003), relative to non-musicians.…”