Musical abilities in children with developmental cerebellar anomalies

Abstract

Developmental Cerebellar Anomalies (DCA) are rare diseases (e.g., Joubert syndrome) that affect various motor and non-motor functions during childhood. The present study examined whether music perception and production are affected in children with DCA. Sixteen children with DCA and 37 healthy matched control children were tested with the Montreal Battery for Evaluation of Musical Abilities (MBEMA) to assess musical perception. Musical production was assessed using two singing tasks: a pitch-matching task and a melodic reproduction task. Mixed model analyses showed that children with DCA were impaired on the MBEMA rhythm perception subtest, whereas there was no difference between the two groups on the melodic perception subtest. Children with DCA were also impaired in the melodic reproduction task. In both groups, singing performance was positively correlated with rhythmic and melodic perception scores, and a strong correlation was found between singing ability and oro-bucco-facial praxis in children with DCA. Overall, children with DCA showed impairments in both music perception and production, although heterogeneity in cerebellar patient's profiles was highlighted by individual analyses. These results confirm the role of the cerebellum in rhythm processing as well as in the vocal sensorimotor loop in a developmental perspective. Rhythmic deficits in cerebellar patients are discussed in light of recent work on predictive timing networks including the cerebellum. Our results open innovative remediation perspectives aiming at improving perceptual and/or production musical abilities while considering the heterogeneity of patients' clinical profiles to design music-based therapies.

Keywords: ataxia; cerebellum; children; developmental cerebellar anomalies; music perception; music production; rhythm; singing.

FIGURE 1

Mean scores obtained for each subtest of the MBEMA. Origin is set at chance level (10/20). The error bars correspond to the standard error of the mean. ***p < 0.001.

FIGURE 2

Mean ratings on the melodic reproduction task as a function of experimental conditions. The error bars correspond to the standard error of the mean. Ratings were given by 10 blind judges on a continuous scale from 0 (very poor performance) to 10 (very good performance) and were then averaged. ***p < 0.001.

FIGURE 3

Scatterplot illustrating the correlations between mean ratings in melodic reproduction task and scores on the MBEMA Melody subtest. Regression lines are fitted for each group and the Spearman’s ρ are indicated. *p < 0.05 and ***p < 0.001.

FIGURE 4

Scatterplot illustrating the correlations between mean ratings in melody singing and scores on the MBEMA Rhythm subtest. Regression lines are fitted for each group and the Spearman’s ρ are indicated. **p < 0.01 and ***p < 0.001.