Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Jünemann, Kristin
• Engels, Anna
• Marie, Damien
• Worschech, Florian
• Scholz, Daniel S.
• Grouiller, Frédéric
• Kliegel, Matthias
• Van De Ville, Dimitri
• Altenmüller, Eckart
• Krüger, Tillmann H. C.
• James, Clara E.
• Sinke, Christopher

Titel

Increased functional connectivity in the right dorsal auditory stream after a full year of piano training in healthy older adults

Ist Teil von

• Scientific reports, 2023-11, Vol.13 (1), p.19993-19993, Article 19993

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Quelle

EZB-FREE-00999 freely available EZB journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Abstract Learning to play an instrument at an advanced age may help to counteract or slow down age-related cognitive decline. However, studies investigating the neural underpinnings of these effects are still scarce. One way to investigate the effects of brain plasticity is using resting-state functional connectivity (FC). The current study compared the effects of learning to play the piano (PP) against participating in music listening/musical culture (MC) lessons on FC in 109 healthy older adults. Participants underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging at three time points: at baseline, and after 6 and 12 months of interventions. Analyses revealed piano training-specific FC changes after 12 months of training. These include FC increase between right Heschl’s gyrus (HG), and other right dorsal auditory stream regions. In addition, PP showed an increased anticorrelation between right HG and dorsal posterior cingulate cortex and FC increase between the right motor hand area and a bilateral network of predominantly motor-related brain regions, which positively correlated with fine motor dexterity improvements. We suggest to interpret those results as increased network efficiency for auditory-motor integration. The fact that functional neuroplasticity can be induced by piano training in healthy older adults opens new pathways to countervail age related decline.