Musical ability is associated with enhanced auditory and visual cognitive processing

BMC Neuroscience

Reasearch Article

Caroline Faßhauer¹  Achim Frese²  Stefan Evers³ 

[1] Department of Neurology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany;Department of Neurology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany;Academy of Manual Medicine, Münster, Germany;Department of Neurology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany;Department of Neurology, Krankenhaus Lindenbrunn, Lindenbrunn 1, 31863, Coppenbrügge, Germany;

关键词: Music;    Musical ability;    Event-related potentials;    Visual cognition;    Auditory cognition;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12868-015-0200-4

 received in 2015-06-21, accepted in 2015-09-08,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMusical ability has always been linked to enhanced cognitive and intellectual skills. We were interested in the relation between musical ability and short-time cognitive processing as measured by event-related potentials, in particular in visual processing, since previous studies have already suggested such a link for acoustic cognitive processing. We measured auditory and visual event-related potentials as elicited by an oddball paradigm in 20 healthy subjects (10 musicians and 10 non-musicians; 10 female; mean age 24 ± 2 years). In addition, the Seashore test and a test developed by the authors to detect relevant amusia, the latter one with a high ceiling effect, were also applied.ResultsThe most important finding was that there is a significant linear correlation between musical ability as measured by these tests and the P3 latencies of both the auditory and visual event-related potentials. Furthermore, musicians showed shorter latencies of the event-related potentials than non-musicians.ConclusionsWe conclude that musical ability as measured by neuropsychological tests is associated with improved short-time cognitive processing both in the auditory and, surprisingly, also in the visual domain.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Faßhauer et al. 2015