Abstract
Many investigations have reported structural, functional, and cognitive changes in the brains of musicians, which occur as a result of many years of musical practice. We aimed to investigate if intensive, long-term musical practice is associated with improved visual memory ability. Musicians and non-musicians, who were comparable in age, gender, and education, were submitted to a visual memory test. The test consisted of the presentation of four sets of stimuli, each one containing eight figures to be memorized. Each set was followed by individual figures and the subject was required to indicate if each figure was or was not present in the memorized set, by pressing the corresponding keys. We divided the test in two parts, in which the stimuli had greater or reduced semantic coding. Overall, musicians showed better performance on reaction times, but not on accuracy. An additional analysis revealed no significant interaction between group and any part of the test in the prediction of the outcomes. When simple reaction time was included as covariate, no significant difference between groups was found on reaction times. In the group of musicians, we found some significant correlations between variables related to musical practice and performance in the visual memory test. In summary, our data provide no evidence of enhanced visual memory ability in musicians, since there was no difference in accuracy between groups. Our results suggest that performance of musicians in the visual memory test may be associated with better sensorimotor integration, since although they have presented shorter reaction times, such effect disappeared when taken in consideration the simple reaction time test. However, given existing evidence of associations between simple reaction time and cognitive function, their performance in the visual memory test could also be related to enhanced visual attention ability, as has been suggested by previous studies, but this hypothesis deserves more investigation.
Highlights
Recognition of the influence of music on cerebral function has incited neuroscientists and musicians to investigate the connections between these two areas since the 1990s
In the group of musicians, we found some significant correlations between variables related to musical practice and performance in the visual memory test
Our results suggest that performance of musicians in the visual memory test may be associated with better sensorimotor integration, since they have presented shorter reaction times, such effect disappeared when taken in consideration the simple reaction time test
Summary
Recognition of the influence of music on cerebral function has incited neuroscientists and musicians to investigate the connections between these two areas since the 1990s. According to Münte et al (2002), musicians represent an ideal model to investigate plastic changes in the human brain, considering the complexity of the stimulus – music – normally related to very high levels of exposure during musical practice. Many investigations have reported structural and functional changes in the brains of musicians, involving several regions, such as auditory (Pantev et al, 1998), motor (Amunts et al, 1997), and somatosensory areas (Elbert et al, 1995), as well as brainstem (Musacchia et al, 2007) and hippocampus (Herdener et al, 2010), which occur as a result of many years of musical practice. Several works (e.g., Standley and Hughes, 1997; Costa-Giomi, 1999; Hetland, 2000; Rauscher and Zupan, 2000; Vaughn, 2000; Anvari et al, 2002; Ho et al, 2003; Schellenberg, 2004, 2006; Gromko, 2005; Forgeard et al, 2008; Piro and Ortiz, 2009) have demonstrated associations between formal musical training in children and improvements in non-musical cognitive abilities, such as literacy, mathematics and visual–spatial reasoning, as well as general intelligence
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