Abstract
Practicing a musical instrument is associated with cognitive benefits and structural brain changes in correlational and interventional trials; however, the effect of musical training on cognition during childhood is still unclear. In this longitudinal study of child development we analyzed the association between musical practice and performance on reasoning, processing speed and working memory (WM) during development. Subjects (n = 352) between the ages of 6 and 25 years participated in neuropsychological assessments and neuroimaging investigations (n = 64) on two or three occasions, 2 years apart. Mixed model regression showed that musical practice had an overall positive association with WM capacity (visuo-spatial WM, F = 4.59, p = 0.033, verbal WM, F = 9.69, p = 0.002), processing speed, (F = 4.91, p = 0.027) and reasoning (Raven’s progressive matrices, F = 28.34, p < 0.001) across all three time points, after correcting for the effect of parental education and other after school activities. Music players also had larger gray matter volume in the temporo-occipital and insular cortex (p = 0.008), areas previously reported to be related to musical notation reading. The change in WM between the time points was proportional to the weekly hours spent on music practice for both WM tests (VSWM, β = 0.351, p = 0.003, verbal WM, β = 0.261, p = 0.006) but this was not significant for reasoning ability (β = 0.021, p = 0.090). These effects remained when controlling for parental education and other after school activities. In conclusion, these results indicate that music practice positively affects WM development and support the importance of practice for the development of WM during childhood and adolescence.
Highlights
Previous research on practice on specific skills demonstrates domain specific expertise, whether it be within the field of chess, memorizing numbers, or dance, with little or no transfer evident of this superiority to other tasks (Ericsson and Lehmann, 1996)
This method iteratively The results showed a significant effect of music practice aligned the gray matter images from all three time points hours/week on the outcome measures visuo-spatial working memory (WM), verbal to their common average template
Given that the results indicate linear effects of music practice on WM and that previous studies have demonstrated effects of music practice on reasoning after as little as 1 year of practice (Rauscher et al, 1997; Schellenberg, 2004), it may be that the music-related processes taxing reasoning are trained while learning the musical notation code, whereas the processes taxing WM are trained while reading the code, keeping sections of code in WM and in control of attention
Summary
Previous research on practice on specific skills demonstrates domain specific expertise, whether it be within the field of chess, memorizing numbers, or dance, with little or no transfer evident of this superiority to other tasks (Ericsson and Lehmann, 1996) This is explained by the use of material specific strategies, schemas, and automatization of the procedures being performed (Ericsson et al, 2006). A different way of achieving cognitive enhancement may be to target the entire bodily system through physical training where such effects have been observed (Hillman et al, 2008; Hotting and Roder, 2013) Another way to achieve this may be to regularly engage in a complex activity that requires one to use higher order thinking, such as playing a musical instrument
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