The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Brain by Michael H. Thaut;Donald A. Hodges; & Donald A. Hodges

Author:Michael H. Thaut;Donald A. Hodges; & Donald A. Hodges [Thaut, Michael H. & Hodges, Donald A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192526137
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
Published: 2019-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Bringing It All Together

Taken together, the current data on brain structure in musicians suggests that there may be pre-existing structural features—likely in the auditory-motor network supporting musical skill—that predispose individuals to pursue music training. Once training begins, the long-term effects on behavior and brain structure depend on the age of start, and thus on the interaction between training and the maturational trajectories of these regions and their connections. Early training may produce a type of scaffold or metaplasticity effect. Metaplasticity is a term that originates from studies of hippocampal learning mechanisms, and denotes the idea that experience can change the potential for plasticity of a synapse (for review see Altenmüller & Furuya, 2016; Herholz & Zatorre, 2012). When applied to the context of music, it is the idea that training during specific phases of brain development can have long-term effects on how those regions change in response to future experience. Evidence for metaplastic effects resulting from music training comes from studies showing that musicians have enhanced learning of sensory and motor skills (Herholz, Boh, & Pantev, 2011; Ragert, Schmidt, Altenmüller, & Dinse, 2004; Rosenkranz, Williamon, & Rothwell, 2007), and greater increases in M1 activity during learning (Hund-Georgiadis & von Cramon, 1999). Thus we can think of early training as a scaffold on which later training can build (Bailey et al., 2014; Steele et al., 2013). Along with these training-specific metaplastic effects, evidence from heritability studies indicates that skills and abilities not specific to music may also contribute to promoting or limiting plasticity; these include the propensity to practice (Mosing et al., 2014), as well personality and cognitive variables that can support training (Butkovic et al., 2015).

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