When Music and Long-Term Memory Interact: Effects of Musical Expertise on Functional and Structural Plasticity in the Hippocampus

Mathilde Groussard,Francis Eustache,Renaud La Joie,Géraldine Rauchs,Hervé Platel,Béatrice Desgranges,Gaël Chételat,Fausto Viader,Brigitte Landeau,André Aleman

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013225

Abstract

The development of musical skills by musicians results in specific structural and functional modifications in the brain. Surprisingly, no functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study has investigated the impact of musical training on brain function during long-term memory retrieval, a faculty particularly important in music. Thus, using fMRI, we examined for the first time this process during a musical familiarity task (i.e., semantic memory for music). Musical expertise induced supplementary activations in the hippocampus, medial frontal gyrus, and superior temporal areas on both sides, suggesting a constant interaction between episodic and semantic memory during this task in musicians. In addition, a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) investigation was performed within these areas and revealed that gray matter density of the hippocampus was higher in musicians than in nonmusicians. Our data indicate that musical expertise critically modifies long-term memory processes and induces structural and functional plasticity in the hippocampus.

Highlights

Becoming a skilled musician requires a lot of practice and this kind of learning relies on multiple faculties [1]
Previous structural and functional studies have demonstrated the effects of musical training on the brain [1,3], but functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) investigations are scarce and have mainly focused on auditory, motor or somatosensory tasks
The impact of musical training on brain activity has been explored through various experimental paradigms, but has never been assessed with fMRI using a task that focuses on long-term musical memory retrieval

Summary

Introduction

Becoming a skilled musician requires a lot of practice and this kind of learning relies on multiple faculties (e.g. perception, memory and motor abilities) [1]. The impact of musical training on brain activity has been explored through various experimental paradigms, but has never been assessed with fMRI using a task that focuses on long-term musical memory retrieval. In nonmusicians, this kind of task activates a complex bilateral neural network including in all studies the inferior frontal and superior temporal gyri [9,10,11,12] predominantly in the left hemisphere as highlighted in our previous researches

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