Background: Music training is a well-established model of brain plasticity. Most studies compare professional musicians with non-musicians or probe correlates of individual training in childhood, but neurocognitive effects of collective music training in regular school classrooms remain poorly examined. Aims: To inspect brain/cognition links in music- and language-related abilities in children at the structural and connectivity levels, and to determine effects of a short collective music training as compared to analogous training in sports and to a passive control group. Method: Longitudinal study with pre-test (T1), training, post-test (T2) and follow-up (T3), in three groups of 8-year-old children: music, basketball and no specific training. Children were matched on major cognitive and demographic variables and pseudorandomly assigned to one of the groups. Behavioral measures on cognitive and musical abilities, and on brain structural MRI and resting-state fMRI, were collected at T1, T2 and T3. Results: Learning effects were significant in all groups. Resting-state connectivity revealed a link between sensorimotor systems and processing of emotional speech prosody. Behavioural benefits driven by music training were near transfer effects in the music domain and fine motor abilities; far transfer into simple arithmetics and phonological decoding were also found. Music training induced changes in gray-matter volume of the left cerebellum that correlated with gains in motor performance and with rhythm discrimination at T1, and to higher connectivity between the auditory and sensorimotor networks suggesting enhanced audiomotor coordination. Conclusions: A resource-lean music training program was associated with near transfer behavioral benefits and with plastic changes in gray matter volume and functional neural connectivity.

--

longitudinal,MRI,connectivity,music training,children