Moreno Sylvain, Marques Carlos, Santos Andreia, Santos Manuela, Castro São Luís, Besson Mireille
Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives de la Méditerranée, CNRS-Marseille-Universités, Marseille, France.
Cereb Cortex. 2009 Mar;19(3):712-23. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhn120. Epub 2008 Oct 1.
We conducted a longitudinal study with 32 nonmusician children over 9 months to determine 1) whether functional differences between musician and nonmusician children reflect specific predispositions for music or result from musical training and 2) whether musical training improves nonmusical brain functions such as reading and linguistic pitch processing. Event-related brain potentials were recorded while 8-year-old children performed tasks designed to test the hypothesis that musical training improves pitch processing not only in music but also in speech. Following the first testing sessions nonmusician children were pseudorandomly assigned to music or to painting training for 6 months and were tested again after training using the same tests. After musical (but not painting) training, children showed enhanced reading and pitch discrimination abilities in speech. Remarkably, 6 months of musical training thus suffices to significantly improve behavior and to influence the development of neural processes as reflected in specific pattern of brain waves. These results reveal positive transfer from music to speech and highlight the influence of musical training. Finally, they demonstrate brain plasticity in showing that relatively short periods of training have strong consequences on the functional organization of the children's brain.
我们对32名非音乐家儿童进行了为期9个月的纵向研究，以确定：1）音乐家儿童和非音乐家儿童之间的功能差异是反映了对音乐的特定倾向还是音乐训练的结果；2）音乐训练是否能改善非音乐脑功能，如阅读和语言音高处理。在8岁儿童执行旨在检验音乐训练不仅能改善音乐中的音高处理，还能改善语音中的音高处理这一假设的任务时，记录与事件相关的脑电位。在第一次测试后，非音乐家儿童被伪随机分配到音乐或绘画训练组，为期6个月，并在训练后使用相同测试再次进行测试。经过音乐（而非绘画）训练后，儿童在阅读和语音音高辨别能力方面有所提高。值得注意的是，6个月的音乐训练足以显著改善行为，并影响神经过程的发展，这在特定的脑电波模式中得到体现。这些结果揭示了从音乐到语音的积极迁移，并突出了音乐训练的影响。最后，它们通过表明相对较短的训练期对儿童大脑的功能组织有强烈影响，证明了大脑的可塑性。
