Sluming Vanessa, Brooks Jonathan, Howard Matthew, Downes John Joseph, Roberts Neil
School of Health Sciences' Division of Medical Imaging and Radiotherapy, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GB, United Kingdom.
J Neurosci. 2007 Apr 4;27(14):3799-806. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0147-07.2007.
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.
我们提供了神经行为学证据，支持音乐训练带来的可转移益处，即改变大脑功能并提高职业管弦乐音乐家在非音乐视觉空间任务中的认知表现。具体而言，管弦乐音乐家在三维心理旋转（3DMR）任务中的表现呈现出通常只有经过大量练习才能达到的行为特征，这支持了以下观点：这些音乐家已经拥有发育良好的神经回路来支持3DMR。此外，功能磁共振成像显示，只有管弦乐音乐家除了在年龄、性别和语言智力相匹配的音乐家和非音乐家中都被激活的著名视觉空间网络外，布罗卡区的激活也显著增加。我们将这些功能性神经影像学发现解释为反映了布罗卡区的优先募集，布罗卡区是支持视奏和支撑音乐表演的运动序列组织的神经基质的一部分，在音乐家中为3DMR提供支持。因此，我们的数据提供了一致的行为和神经功能证据，支持以下观点：音乐表演视奏技能的发展会改变大脑回路组织，进而带来更广泛的认知益处，特别是对职业管弦乐音乐家的非音乐视觉空间认知。
