Long-term effects of musical training and functional plasticity in salience system

Abstract

Musicians undergoing long-term musical training show improved emotional and cognitive function, which suggests the presence of neuroplasticity. The structural and functional impacts of the human brain have been observed in musicians. In this study, we used data-driven functional connectivity analysis to map local and distant functional connectivity in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 28 professional musicians and 28 nonmusicians. Compared with nonmusicians, musicians exhibited significantly greater local functional connectivity density in 10 regions, including the bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, and anterior temporoparietal junction. A distant functional connectivity analysis demonstrated that most of these regions were included in salience system, which is associated with high-level cognitive control and fundamental attentional process. Additionally, musicians had significantly greater functional integration in this system, especially for connections to the left insula. Increased functional connectivity between the left insula and right temporoparietal junction may be a response to long-term musical training. Our findings indicate that the improvement of salience network is involved in musical training. The salience system may represent a new avenue for exploration regarding the underlying foundations of enhanced higher-level cognitive processes in musicians.

Figure 1

The local FCD maps in two groups (TC = 0.6). The upper part represents the averaged local FCD in musicians' group, and the bottom part represents averaged local FCD in nonmusicians' group. R, right; L, left.

Figure 2

The mean local FCD maps across all subjects for 9 Tc thresholds.

Figure 3

Significantly increased local FCD in musicians compared with nonmusicians. The left column shows 10 ROIs' position. The right part shows significantly increased local FCD in 10 axis images and 9 Tc values separately. ROIs' abbreviations are consistent with those shown in Table 1.

Figure 4

Significantly increased functional connectivity between ROIs in musicians compared with nonmusicians (a) and the relationship between the functional connectivity and musical training duration (b). ROIs' abbreviations are consistent with those shown in Table 1, and the abbreviation “CC” meant correlation coefficient.

Figure 5

The group-level functional connectivity maps seeded at 6 ROIs and their difference between musicians and nonmusicians. The first column shows the seeds; the second and the third column illustrated the positive (hot color) and negative (cool color) functional connectivity with the seeds rendered onto a three-dimension brain reconstruction. The last column (axis images) represents significantly increased functional connectivity in musicians compared with nonmusicians. ROIs' abbreviations are consistent with those shown in Table 1.

Figure 6

The group-level functional connectivity maps seeded at 4 ROIs. The first column shows the seeds; the second and the third column illustrated the positive (hot color) and negative (cool color) functional connectivity with the seed rendered onto a three-dimension brain reconstruction. ROIs' abbreviations are consistent with those shown in Table 1.