Musical Training Shapes Structural Brain Development

TLDR

The human brain can alter in response to environmental demands, and training‑induced structural changes have been shown in healthy adults. This study aims to directly link structural brain changes to behavioral changes in developing children, determining whether adult expert differences arise from nature or nurture. Participants underwent 15 months of long‑term instrumental music training, an intense multisensory motor experience, allowing correlation of brain plasticity with behavioral changes. Structural brain changes after 15 months of training correlated with improved musically relevant motor and auditory skills, indicating that adult expert differences are likely due to training‑induced plasticity.

Abstract

The human brain has the remarkable capacity to alter in response to environmental demands. Training-induced structural brain changes have been demonstrated in the healthy adult human brain. However, no study has yet directly related structural brain changes to behavioral changes in the developing brain, addressing the question of whether structural brain differences seen in adults (comparing experts with matched controls) are a product of “nature” (via biological brain predispositions) or “nurture” (via early training). Long-term instrumental music training is an intense, multisensory, and motor experience and offers an ideal opportunity to study structural brain plasticity in the developing brain in correlation with behavioral changes induced by training. Here we demonstrate structural brain changes after only 15 months of musical training in early childhood, which were correlated with improvements in musically relevant motor and auditory skills. These findings shed light on brain plasticity and suggest that structural brain differences in adult experts (whether musicians or experts in other areas) are likely due to training-induced brain plasticity.