Neural Correlates of Processing Syntax in Music and ... - PubMan

Musical Training 28
In addition to the differences in auditory and motor regions further difference may be
found in other brain regions. In adults with musical training since early childhood, the
brain white matter differed significantly from controls, demonstrating the strong effects
of early musical training (Bengtsson et al., 2005; Schlaug et al., 1995).
Gaser and Schlaug (2003) compared the whole brain morphology of musicians, amateur-musicians
and non-musicians and observed a significant positive correlation between
musician status and increase in grey matter volume in perirolandic regions including
primary motor and somatosensory areas, premotor areas, and the left cerebellum;
Heschl’s gyrus, anterior superior parietal areas, in the inferior temporal gyrus (bilaterally
in all these regions), and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Remarkably, there
were no areas with a significant decrease in grey matter volume in musicians. For most
of these regions found enlarged, similar results were obtained in earlier studies. However,
additional enlargements were also found in anterior superior parietal areas, involved
in the integration of information from different sensory modalities. These differences
might be implicated in the superior spatial-visual processing found in musicians
(see below; see also Hetland, 2000), and may contribute to sight-reading which involves
the fast integration of multimodal sensory information and motor preparation (Sergent,
Zuck, Terriah, & MacDonald, 1992).
Notably, Gaser and Schlaug found differences for the left IFG which contains Broca’s
area: Sluming et al. (2002, 2007) observed an increased grey matter volume of musicians
for this brain region. This region is crucially involved in the processing of musical
and linguistic syntax. Put to a more abstract level, this region is essential for the processing
of ordered sequences. Many skills, required by instrumentalists, are associated
with the analysis of sequential sounds and the transformation of musical notation into
motor sequences: listening for the accuracy of a musical performance while reading a
musical score – a sequence-checking task – activated the left IFG (Parsons, 2001), as
did musical syntax processing (Koelsch, Fritz et al., 2005; Maess et al., 2001), processing
and organization of sequential sound stimuli (Platel et al., 1997), and sight reading
(Sergent et al., 1992).
3.4 Neuronal functional effects of musical training
Koelsch and Siebel (2005) proposed a model of the processing steps involved in music
perception (for detailed description and Figure, see chapter “Music perception”). This
model is utilized as a framework to structure the evidence of neuronal functional differences
between musicians and non-musicians which is reviewed here.
A considerable amount of first, sub-cortical processing of the auditory signal takes place
in auditory brain-stem and thalamus. Differences between musicians and non-musicians