Abstract
Developmental changes in the human brain coincide with and underlie changes in a wide range of motor and cognitive abilities. Neuroimaging studies have shown that musical training can result in structural and functional plasticity in the brains of musicians, and that this plasticity is greater for those who begin training early in life. However, previous studies have not controlled for differences between early-trained (ET) and late-trained (LT) musicians in the total number of years of musical training and experience. In the present experiment, we tested musicians who began training before and after the age of 7 on learning of a timed motor sequence task. The groups were matched for years of musical experience, years of formal training and hours of current practice. Results showed that ET musicians performed better than LT musicians, and that this performance advantage persisted after 5 days of practice. Performance differences were greatest for a measure of response synchronization, suggesting that early training has its greatest effect on neural systems involved in sensorimotor integration and timing. These findings support the idea that there may be a sensitive period in childhood where enriched motor training through musical practice results in long-lasting benefits for performance later in life. These results are also consistent with the results of studies showing structural changes in motor-related regions of the brain in musicians that are specifically related to training early in life.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Badan M, Hauert C-A, Mounoud P (2000) Sequential pointing in children and adults. J Exp Child Psychol 75:43–69
Baharloo S, Johnston P, Service S, Gitschier J, Freimer N (1998) Absolute pitch: an approach for identification of genetic and nongenetic components. Am J Hum Genetics 62:224–231
Barnea-Goraly N, Menon V, Eckert M, Tamm L, Bammer R, Karchemskiy, Dant C, Reiss A (2005) White matter development during childhood and adolescence: a cross-sectional diffusion tensor imaging study. Cereb Cortex 15:1848–1854
Beitel R, Schreiner C, Cheung S, Wang X, Merzenich M (2003) Reward-dependent plasticity in the primary auditory cortex of adult monkeys trained to discriminate temporally modulated signals. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100:11070–11075
Bengtsson S, Nagy Z, Skare S, Forsman L, Forssberg H, Ullén F (2005) Extensive piano practicing has regionally specific effects on white matter development. Nat Neurosci 8:1148–1150
Bower J (1995) The cerebellum as a sensory acquisition controller. Hum Brain Mapp 2:255–256
Brainard M, Knudsen E (1998) Sensitive periods for visual calibration of the auditory space map in the barn owl optic tectum. J Neurosci 18(10):3929–3942
Casey B, Giedd J, Thomas K, (2000) Structural and functional brain development and its relation to cognitive development. Biol Psychol 54:241–257
Costa-Giomi E, Gilmour R, Siddell J, Lefebvre E (2001) Absolute pitch, early musical instruction and spatial abilities. Ann N Y Acad Sci 930:394–396
Crovitz HG, Zener K (1962) A test for assessing hand and eye dominance. Am J Psychol 75:271–276
Curtiss S (1977) Genie: a psycholinguistic study of a modern-day wild child. Academic, New York
Doyon J, Penhune V, Ungerleider L (2003) Distinct contributions of the cortico-striatal and cortico-cerebellar systems to motor skill learning. Neuropsychologia 41:252–262
Elbert T, Pantev C, Wienbruch C, Rockstroh B, Taub E (1995) Increased cortical representation of the fingers of the left hand in string players. Science 270:305–307
Essens PJ (1986) Hierarchical organization of temporal patterns. Percept Psychophys 40:69–73
Essens PJ, Povel D-J (1985) Metrical and nonmetrical representations of temporal patterns. Percept Psychophys 37:1–7
Gao J, Parsons L, Bower J, Xiong J, Fox P (1996) Cerebellum implicated in sensory acquisition and discrimination rather than motor control. Science 272:545–547
Garvey M, Ziemann U, Bartko J, Denckla M, Barker C, Wassermann E (2003) Cortical correlates of neuromotor development in healthy children. Clin Neurophysiol 114:1662–1670
Gaser C, Schlaug G (2003) Brain structure differences between musicians and non-musicians. J Neurosci 23:9240–9245
Giedd J, Blumenthal J, Jeffries N, Castellanos F, Liu H, Zijdenbos A, Paus T, Evans A, Rapoport J (1999) Brain development during childhood and adolescence: a longitudinal MRI study. Nat Neurosci 2:861–863
Gotay N, Giedd J, Lusk L, Hayashi K, Greenstein D, Vaituzis A, Nugent T, Merman D, Clasen L, Toga A, Rapoport J, Thompson P (2004) Dynamic mapping of human cortical development during childhood and through early adulthood. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101:8174–8179
Hubel D, Wiesel T (1965) Binocular interaction in striate cortex of kittens reared with artificial squint. J Neurophysiol 28:1041–1059
Hutchinson S, Kobayashi M, Horkan C, Pascual-Leone A, Alexander M, Schlaug G, (2002) Age-related differences in movement representation. NeuroImage 17:1720–1728
Huttenlocher P, Dabholkar A (1997) Regional differences in synaptogenesis in human cerebral cortex. J Comp Neurol 387:167–178
Ivry R, Spencer R, Zelaznik H, Diedrichsen J (2003) The cerebellum and event timing. Ann N Y Acad Sci 978:302–317
Johnson J, Newport E (1989) Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognit Psychol 21:60–99
Karni A, Meyer G, Jezzard P, Adams M, Turner R, Ungerleider L (1995) Functional MRI evidence for adult motor cortex plasticity during motor skill learning. Nature 377:155–158
Kleim J, Hogg T, VandenBerg P, Cooper N, Bruneau R, Remple M (2004) Cortical synaptogenesis and motor map reorganziation occur during late, but not early, phase of motor skill learning. J Neurosci 24:628–633
Kleim JA, Freeman JH Jr, Bruneau R, Nolan BC, Cooper NR, Zook A, Walters D (2002) Synapse formation is associated with memory storage in the cerebellum. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99:13228–13231
Knudsen E (2004) Sensitive periods in the development of the brain and behavior. J Cognit Neurosci 16:1412–1425
Koeneke S, Lutz K, Wustenberg T, Jancke L (2004) Long-term training affects cerebellar processing in skilled keyboard players. NeuroReport 15:1279–1282
Lenneberg E (1967) Biological foundations of language. Wiley, New York
Miyazaki K, Rakowski A (2002) Recognition of notated melodies by posessors and non-posessors of perfect pitch. Percept Psychophys 64:1337–1345
Paus T, Zijdenbos A, Worsley K, Collins D (1999) Structural maturation of neural pathways in children and adolescents: In vivo study. Science 283:1908–1911
Penhune V, Doyon J (2002) Dynamic cortical and subcortical networks in learning and delayed recall of timed motor sequences. J Neurosci 22:1397–1406
Penhune V, Doyon J (2003) Dynamic cortical and subcortical networks involved in early learning and consolidation of timed motor sequences. Cognit Neurosci Soc Abs 134
Penhune V, Doyon J (2005) Cerebellum and M1 interaction during early learning of timed motor sequences. Neuroimage 26:801–812
Penhune VB, Zatorre RJ, Feindel W (1999) The role of auditory cortex in the retention of rhythmic patterns studied in patients with temporal-lobe removals including Heschl’s gyrus. Neuropsychologia 37:315–331
Ragert P, Schmidt A, Altenmuller E, Dinse H (2004) Superior tactile performance and learning in professional pianists: evidence for meta-plasticity in musicians. Eur J Neurosci 19:473–478
Savion-Lemieux T, Penhune V (2005) The effects of practice and delay on motor skill learning and retention. Exp Brain Res 161:423–431
Schlaug G, Jancke L, Huang Y, Staiger JF, Steinmetz H (1995) Increased corpus callosum size in musicians. Neuropsychologia 33:1047–1055
Schneider P, Scherg M, Dosch H, Specht H, Gutschalk A, Rupp A (2002) Morphology of Heschl’s gyrus reflects enhanced activation in the auditory cortex of musicians. Nat Neurosci 5:688–694
Schubotz R, Friederici A, von Cramon D (2000) Time perception and motor timing: a common cortical and subcortical basis revealed by fMRI. Neuroimage 11:1–12
Sowell E, Thompson P, Leonard C, Welcome S, Kan E, Toga A (2004) Longitudinal mapping of cortical thickness and brain growth in normal children. J Neurosci 24:8223–8231
Tober CL, Pollak SD (2005) Motor development of post-institutionalized children across time. In: Biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Atlanta, GA
Toni I, Krams M, Turner R, Passingham R (1998) The time course of changes during motor sequence learning: a whole-brain fMRI study. Neuroimage 8:50–61
Watanabe D, Penhune V, Savion-Lemieux T (2004) The effect of musical experience on the acquisition and retention of a temporal motor sequence task. Soc Cognit Neurosci (Abstracts)
Weber-Fox C, Neville H (2001) Sensitive periods differentiate processing of open- and closed-class words: an ERP study of bilinguals. J Speech Lang Hear Res 44:1338–1353
Wiesel T, Hubel D (1965) Extent of recovery from the effects of visual deprivation in kittens. J Neurophysiol 28:1060–1072
Zatorre R (2003) Absolute pitch: a model for understanding the influence of genes and development on neural and cognitive function. Nat Neurosci 6:692–695
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all of the individuals who participated in this study. The authors gratefully acknowledge the work of Andrea Lee who assisted in the collection of these data. Special thanks go to Dr. Christine Beckett of the Department of Music at Concordia for her assistance in recruiting musicians. This study was funded by grants from the Canadian National Science and Engineering Research Council and the Fonds pour la Recherche en Santé du Québec.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Watanabe, D., Savion-Lemieux, T. & Penhune, V.B. The effect of early musical training on adult motor performance: evidence for a sensitive period in motor learning. Exp Brain Res 176, 332–340 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-006-0619-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-006-0619-z