Abstract
This study compared 30 older musicians and 30 age-matched non-musicians to investigate the association between lifelong musical instrument training and age-related cognitive decline and brain atrophy (musicians: mean age 70.8 years, musical experience 52.7 years; non-musicians: mean age 71.4 years, no or less than 3 years of musical experience). Although previous research has demonstrated that young musicians have larger gray matter volume (GMV) in the auditory-motor cortices and cerebellum than non-musicians, little is known about older musicians. Music imagery in young musicians is also known to share a neural underpinning [the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and cerebellum] with music performance. Thus, we hypothesized that older musicians would show superiority to non-musicians in some of the abovementioned brain regions. Behavioral performance, GMV, and brain activity, including functional connectivity (FC) during melodic working memory (MWM) tasks, were evaluated in both groups. Behaviorally, musicians exhibited a much higher tapping speed than non-musicians, and tapping speed was correlated with executive function in musicians. Structural analyses revealed larger GMVs in both sides of the cerebellum of musicians, and importantly, this was maintained until very old age. Task-related FC analyses revealed that musicians possessed greater cerebellar-hippocampal FC, which was correlated with tapping speed. Furthermore, musicians showed higher activation in the SMG during MWM tasks; this was correlated with earlier commencement of instrumental training. These results indicate advantages or heightened coupling in brain regions associated with music performance and imagery in musicians. We suggest that lifelong instrumental training highly predicts the structural maintenance of the cerebellum and related cognitive maintenance in old age.
Highlights
Normal aging accompanies the age-related decline in various cognitive and motor functions, especially in processing speed, episodic and working memory, and motor speed (Park et al, 2002; Seidler et al, 2010; Nyberg et al, 2012)
Is the superiority in brain structure and increased co-activation of audiolinguistic and motor-related areas observed in young musicians maintained in older musicians? Second, if these characteristics are retained in older musicians, does this lead to the superiority of cognitive function measured by using behavioral assessments? To answer these, we investigated brain structure and activity, including functional connectivity (FC), during a melodic working memory (MWM) task by comparing older musicians with nonmusicians
For trail making test (TMT)-B, Welch’s t-test was used due to heteroscedasticity, and the results showed a significant difference between the groups (Table 4: t(44.94) = 2.33, P = 0.024, d = 0.60)
Summary
Normal aging accompanies the age-related decline in various cognitive and motor functions, especially in processing speed, episodic and working memory, and motor speed (Park et al, 2002; Seidler et al, 2010; Nyberg et al, 2012). Cross-sectional behavioral studies have shown that older instrumental musicians have higher levels of non-verbal visual memory, naming, executive function, and auditory attention compared to non-musicians (Hanna-Pladdy and MacKay, 2011; Parbery-Clark et al, 2011; Hanna-Pladdy and Gajewski, 2012; Amer et al, 2013; White-Schwoch et al, 2013; Zendel and Alain, 2014; Strong and Mast, 2019) Such superiority of musicians may be accounted for by their vigorous musical training with complex physical and mental operations such as the translation of visually presented musical symbols into auditory-motor imagery, high speed and skillful execution of finger movement to realize melodies and musical impressions, and memorization of long musical phrases. Little is known about the neural characteristics of older musicians, that is, how their brain structure and activity benefit from lifelong training and playing of a musical instrument
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