Broca's Area Supports Enhanced Visuospatial Cognition in Orchestral Musicians Export

@article{citeulike:1856774, abstract = {We provide neurobehavioral evidence supporting the transferable benefit of music training to alter brain function and enhance cognitive performance in a nonmusical visuospatial task in professional orchestral musicians. In particular, orchestral musicians' performance on a three-dimensional mental rotation (3DMR) task exhibited the behavioral profile normally only attained after significant practice, supporting the suggestion that these musicians already possessed well developed neural circuits to support 3DMR. Furthermore, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that only orchestral musicians showed significantly increased activation in Broca's area, in addition to the well known visuospatial network, which was activated in both musicians and nonmusicians who were matched on age, sex, and verbal intelligence. We interpret these functional neuroimaging findings to reflect preferential recruitment of Broca's area, part of the neural substrate supporting sight reading and motor-sequence organization underpinning musical performance, to subserve 3DMR in musicians. Our data, therefore, provide convergent behavioral and neurofunctional evidence supporting the suggestion that development of the sight-reading skills of musical performance alters brain circuit organization which, in turn, confers a wider cognitive benefit, in particular, to nonmusical visuospatial cognition in professional orchestral musicians. 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0147-07.2007}, author = {Sluming, Vanessa and Brooks, Jonathan and Howard, Matthew and Downes, John J. and Roberts, Neil}, citeulike-article-id = {1856774}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0147-07.2007}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/27/14/3799}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17409244}, citeulike-linkout-3 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=17409244}, day = {4}, doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0147-07.2007}, journal = {J. Neurosci.}, keywords = {brocas, cognition, om, visuospatial}, month = {April}, number = {14}, pages = {3799--3806}, posted-at = {2007-11-02 17:55:17}, priority = {2}, title = {Broca's Area Supports Enhanced Visuospatial Cognition in Orchestral Musicians}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0147-07.2007}, volume = {27}, year = {2007} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1856774 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1856774 N2 - We provide neurobehavioral evidence supporting the transferable benefit of music training to alter brain function and enhance cognitive performance in a nonmusical visuospatial task in professional orchestral musicians. In particular, orchestral musicians' performance on a three-dimensional mental rotation (3DMR) task exhibited the behavioral profile normally only attained after significant practice, supporting the suggestion that these musicians already possessed well developed neural circuits to support 3DMR. Furthermore, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that only orchestral musicians showed significantly increased activation in Broca's area, in addition to the well known visuospatial network, which was activated in both musicians and nonmusicians who were matched on age, sex, and verbal intelligence. We interpret these functional neuroimaging findings to reflect preferential recruitment of Broca's area, part of the neural substrate supporting sight reading and motor-sequence organization underpinning musical performance, to subserve 3DMR in musicians. Our data, therefore, provide convergent behavioral and neurofunctional evidence supporting the suggestion that development of the sight-reading skills of musical performance alters brain circuit organization which, in turn, confers a wider cognitive benefit, in particular, to nonmusical visuospatial cognition in professional orchestral musicians. 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0147-07.2007 IS - 14 JF - J. Neurosci. EP - 3806 TI - Broca's Area Supports Enhanced Visuospatial Cognition in Orchestral Musicians VL - 27 SP - 3799 KW - brocas KW - cognition KW - om KW - visuospatial AU - Sluming, Vanessa AU - Brooks, Jonathan AU - Howard, Matthew AU - Downes, John AU - Roberts, Neil PY - 2007/04/04/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0147-07.2007 ER -